They say things come in threes. I am the survivor of three traumas. The first was the brutal murder of my beloved sister, Dorothy Stratten, by her husband, Paul Snider. Then came the gossip, scrutiny, and unwanted publicity after marrying, divorcing, re-uniting with, and now mourning my partner in life, Peter Bogdanovich. The third trauma is the surprise I got when Peter died suddenly and I was left to navigate the love, legacy, and wreckage he left behind.
As a child in Vancouver, I felt like there was always something not quite right. Ours was a humble household, with erratic meals and a succession of shady men courting our single mother, Peternella Hoogstratten. Friends called her “Nellie.”
Nellie had grown up in Holland but was sent to an orphanage at an early age. Her father was killed fighting in World War II, and her mother, Patronella, could not cope. Nellie and her brother, Aart, were left alone one day when Patronella went out to look for food, and neighbors called the authorities. When she returned home, her children were gone. The authorities separated my mother and my uncle, so they didn’t see each other much over the years. He was placed in a mental institution because there was no room for him at the orphanage.
Mum hated the orphanage, where she fought a lot, mostly defending herself. She ran away once with a friend, and they got caught. She was put in isolation for a long time. How do people survive things like that? She’d had a hard childhood, but she is a high-spirited person with a good sense of humor who never became bitter.
Once she had a family of her own, my mother vowed that no matter what, she was never going to lose her children. Maybe that’s why I learned early on: “Don’t tell anybody anything.” Maybe that was Mum’s protection against Dorothy, John, and me being taken away.
Mum told me that during the war, in Holland, sometimes she was so hungry that she would eat tulip bulbs. There was always something about food with Mum. She would skip meals to make sure we were all fed. She said that she ate while she was cooking, but she never sat down with us or had anything on her plate. She would steal food.
My brother and I also remember moments when, suddenly, Mum would say, “Get down, get down!” We never knew what it meant, but we would all hit the floor. Nellie would be crawling, looking for something to protect herself. Growing up in the orphanage, hearing the bombs of World War II must have given her PTSD. To this day, when she hears firecrackers, she starts to freak out. It’s a fear that was instilled in me.
I never knew my father. Mum never told us that my siblings and I came from different fathers. She said only that our father had gone back to Holland after I was born, where something had happened to him. But she never told us what, and we never asked.
John, my brother, was the man of the house. Mum had boyfriends, though, and, boy, John did not handle that well. There was one boyfriend in particular who stands out. Let’s call him Angus.
Dorothy ordered a birthday gift for my mum from the Avon lady, a special perfume in a pretty bottle in the shape of a peacock with open wings. Mum kept it on the bathroom windowsill, beneath her Dutch curtains. It was always there, until it disappeared one day.
Once she had a family of her own, my mother vowed that no matter what, she was never going to lose her children. Maybe that’s why I learned early on: “Don’t tell anybody anything.”
It suddenly dawned on my brother and me that Angus, who was an alcoholic, had drunk the perfume. He denied it, but I knew he was lying because his breath smelled like the back of Mum’s neck.
Mum confronted him. She knew he had a problem because other things were disappearing from our house. Angus protested, telling her she was crazy and that his breath smelled like perfume because he loved kissing her neck. When Mum found that beautiful, peacock-shaped bottle of perfume—empty—under her bed, she knew.
That was the end of that relationship. Dorothy gave Mum a lecture about dating lousy men. “You’re so wonderful, so beautiful,” she told her. “You don’t need to be scraping the bottom of the barrel.”
If only Dorothy had taken her own advice.
“The Great Playmate Hunt”
Hugh Hefner groomed women. Naïve, pretty girls from Nowhere, U.S.A., were taken in by “Hef,” who promised them the world. For the young women, some of whom were just off the farm, it may have seemed like innocent fun: the roller-skating, the pool, the frolicking on the lawn of a grand estate. It was considered the hip thing to do, a rally for sexual freedom against the puritanism of their parents’ generation.
But the men who frequented the Playboy Mansion—James Caan, Robert Blake, Peter Fonda, O. J. Simpson, Jim Brown, Warren Beatty, Shel Silverstein, Tony Curtis (who lived at Hef’s Holmby Hills mansion for a while), Hugh O’Brian (of The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp), Bill Cosby—were certainly not innocent.
Peter was there, not so much to hang out but to talk business. Hefner owned the rights to Paul Theroux’s novel Saint Jack, which Peter wanted to adapt into a film, with Orson Welles directing. Hefner was reluctant, until Peter found out that he had stolen frames from The Last Picture Show of Cybill Shepherd nude on a diving board. Hefner agreed to give up the rights if Peter dropped charges against him for the theft. So he was able to make the film, but Orson didn’t direct Saint Jack—Peter did. Peter’s first mentor, Roger Corman, produced it, along with Playboy Productions.
It was Hefner who introduced Peter to my sister, who was Playmate of the Month in August 1979 and then Playmate of the Year in 1980. But after Dorothy’s murder, Peter soured on Hefner and the whole Playboy mentality. He and Hefner blamed each other for her death, and I was caught in the middle.
Peter immersed himself in Robert Graves’s The White Goddess, the author’s celebration of the essential power and mystery of women, perhaps as an atonement for the guilt he felt over Dorothy’s death. He even made a pilgrimage to Graves’s home in Majorca. It was a philosophy that stayed with Peter for the rest of his life.
Paul had met and wooed Dorothy when she was still in high school working at a Dairy Queen in Vancouver. It was her second serious relationship but her first time moving away from home, to be with Paul. They eventually married in Vegas, which my mum and brother found out after the fact. One of many secrets I’d kept for Dorothy.
The men who frequented the Playboy Mansion—James Caan, Robert Blake, Peter Fonda, O. J. Simpson, Jim Brown, Warren Beatty, Shel Silverstein, Tony Curtis, Hugh O’Brian, Bill Cosby—were certainly not innocent.
One day they picked me up in Paul’s Cadillac. Mum was on a rare visit to Holland to see her mother after many years, and I had been left at the house of one of her friends. The visit hadn’t gone well, as I suffered a freak injury after falling down an embankment on a fishing trip (I still have the scars), and I desperately missed my mother.
Dorothy and Paul took me to the White Spot, a drive-in restaurant with trays hanging on tinted car windows. She was trying to make me feel better, as I was all banged up from my fall. I went back with them to their apartment, and that night Paul played the guitar for us.
I woke up early Saturday morning to watch Scooby-Doo. While Paul and Dorothy were still asleep, I started snooping, and that’s when I found naked Polaroids of Dorothy hidden behind the television set. I was shocked because she was always so private. What was this?
I looked through the stack of Polaroids, my breath getting shorter, my heart racing, and my mouth dry. I felt like Dorothy and Paul were going to wake up any minute. I didn’t want to look at the photos, but I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t even move my hands. I was frozen. And then I looked down at the carpet—an animal rug with a head on it. The photos were of her naked on that rug. I did a double take. I was horrified to think that these pictures had been taken by the guy who, just hours earlier, played the guitar for us. I wanted to run, but I couldn’t move.
I quickly put them back, hoping they were in the same order.
How could I tell Dorothy that I saw them? I was scared and I started crying. I kept repeating, “I want Mummy,” until Dorothy got up and found me. She kept asking, “Are you O.K.? What happened?” I pretended it was pain from my fishing injury. So that was yet another secret I had to keep.
Now I was afraid of Paul.
A New Name
Mum worried about Dorothy when she and Paul moved to Los Angeles. She first thought it was for modeling work. Then Dorothy told her about Playboy, just before it came out with her nude photographs in it. Mum was very afraid for her and thought it was dangerous. But Dorothy reassured her, “I’m not selling my body. I’m selling my beauty.”
It was a way for my mother to try to deal with it. They loved each other so much. Dorothy was her firstborn, her perfect child. My sister was the mother in a lot of ways. She would send money to my mum from Los Angeles all the time. Mum put money away for my braces, which I needed to remedy a terrible underbite and lisp. Pronouncing my own name as “Louithe” made me even shyer than I was. Dorothy sent us gifts, a care package every week. She opened a bank account for me and kept putting money into it.
As children we sometimes went to the dump with Mum, hoping to find clothing we could salvage. Sometimes, when we all went out shopping together, Dorothy worried that Mum was going to steal something, because she had grown up so poor and would often shoplift. When my sister came home on visits from L.A., she would put her arm around Mum when she saw something she liked and said, “Do you want that, Mum? I’ll get it for you.” It made my sister happy, the idea that she could buy my mum whatever she needed.
While Paul and Dorothy were still asleep, I started snooping, and that’s when I found naked Polaroids of Dorothy hidden behind the television set. I was shocked because she was always so private. What was this?
In L.A., Dorothy was living on Veteran Avenue in Westwood with Paul. Their apartment complex had a pool with a wooden deck. At one end, you were indoors, and if you swam to the other end, you’d be outdoors.
I remember calling Dorothy’s name as she was leaving for an audition. Mum and her boyfriend at the time, Richard, were reclining on chaise lounges, and I was in the pool. “Dorothy! Dorothy! Dorothy! Come here!,” I called. But she wasn’t answering me. I grabbed onto the side of the pool and shouted her name again.
Suddenly she appeared and leaned down to say good-bye, whispering, “Don’t call me by my name. I’ve changed it.”
Hefner didn’t like “Hoogstratten” because it was too long. So he changed her name to “Kristen Shields.”
“What?,” I said. “I can’t call you that!”
“If you’re going to call me when we’re outside, call me by that name. Or don’t call me if it’s in public.”
Then she showed me her headshot: her face with “Kristen Shields” under it. “That’s what happens in Hollywood,” she explained. “They give you a new name. Marilyn Monroe was not her real name. It was Norma Jeane.”
The last thing she told me that day was “Don’t tell Mum.” Another secret I had to keep, but not for long. The next time I came to visit my sister, her name had been changed yet again, but this time just shortened to “Dorothy Stratten.”
I had just turned 12 and was entering adolescence. Sometimes, when I was visiting Dorothy, I would go with her to the infamous Playboy studio on Sunset, with the big bunny logo on the side. I would watch her private parts being made up before a shoot. We grew up modest, dressing behind a door, so watching makeup being applied in this way was very confusing to me.
When Dorothy went to Paul’s apartment on the day of her death—August 14, 1980—as a final visit to the man she was divorcing in order to be with Peter, I was in the car with her. Then I changed my mind suddenly. To this day, I don’t know why. I remember hearing a small voice inside me telling me to stay behind. So I had Dorothy drive me back to Peter’s house in Bel Air. But when Peter later asked me about it that night—“Did she talk to Paul today? Did she see him?”—my answer was no. Only I knew that she had gone there, and Dorothy had asked me to keep it a secret.
I remember sitting at the long wooden table with Peter that fateful night. I remember looking at the time and it said 11 o’clock. She was supposed to pick me up at two o’clock that afternoon to get a pair of Capezio flats that I admired that were just like the ones she always wore. I waited, and I waited, and I waited. When it began to get dark, I was extremely worried because Dorothy was never late.
She didn’t come home. Peter looked troubled. I knew where Dorothy was, but I kept it to myself. At that point I was disappointed and angry at her for not coming back. I was confused as to why she didn’t at least call the house. I felt abandoned because she always kept her word.
I remember that he was eating coffee-flavored Häagen-Dazs right out of the carton when I finally told Peter where Dorothy had gone. He dropped the spoon. He turned white, as if all the blood had drained out of his face, and he left the room.
I didn’t see him again until Dorothy’s funeral.
Louise Stratten is a writer, producer, actress, and the founder of the Dorothy Stratten Foundation. She was a frequent collaborator with Peter Bogdanovich
Sam Kashner is a Writer at Large at AIR MAIL. Previously a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, he is the author or co-author of several books, including Sinatraland: A Novel, When I Was Cool: My Life at the Jack Kerouac School, and Life Isn’t Everything: Mike Nichols, as Remembered by 150 of His Closest Friends
