Pam & Tommy Robert Siegel, creator of True Crime Docuseries, returns to Hulu. Chippendales is your home. This limited series, which is a sexy drama about a curious birth of an all-male revue, has a distinct strain of violence. While the series is building up to a murder-for-hire situation between Chippendales founder Somen “Steve” Banerjee (Kumail Nanjiani) and his business partner, choreographer Nick De Noia (Murray Bartlett), Chippendales is your homeIt spends a large portion of its first episode on a tragic corner of true crime history: The murder-suicide of Dorothy Stratten & Paul Snider.
We meet PlayboyDorothy Stratten (Nicola Peltz Beckham), and Paul Snider, Dan Stevens, were playing with Dorothy Stratten when they walked into Chippendales that cold night. Snider, who was known back in their hometown of Vancouver as “The Jewish pimp,” is a wanna-be big shot/club promoter who somehow convinces Steve to hire him. Steve does in no small part because of the curious couple’s connection to his hero, Hugh Hefner.
What’s the deal with Dorothy Stratten and Paul Snider in Chippendales is your home?
On the show, Paul and Dorothy take Steve out dancing to a gay club, where he gets an eyeful of male flesh on display and notes Stratten’s enjoyment of it. So, the idea was born for an all-male revue. For womenIs born. Snider is disgusted, but Stratten thinks it’s brilliant.
As Stratten explains, “I have something to tell you, Paul, something extremely shocking… but women get horny! We’re every bit as lustful, we’ve just had to be in the closet about it. But now with the whole sexual revolution thing, it’s all coming out. Erica Jong, Deep Throat, the Pill…” Peltz Beckham’s Dorothy Stratten is wise beyond her years, angelic and even-keeled. Her character is given expository dialogue that gives off a self-confidence and certitude that sounds like she’s mouthing words written by an older person (because she is).
This is the first episode in a series of true-crime podcasts. Welcome to Your FantasyNatalia Petrzela, historian, interviews Bruce Nahin. Nahin was a lawyer and an early investor in Chippendales. He tells her, “Paul had gone to Canada someplace and saw some sort of gay male revue that was striptease, and he came and he told us about it.” A far less exciting plot development, to be sure!
Paul Stevens is a brunette hothead. He wears his shirts loosely to show his support. PuppyWith a huge Star of David in his chest hair. This is the hunky glow that Snider could only have hoped for but doesn’t deserve. As the emcee for the untrained Chippendales dancers, he’s crass and cringey, shouting to the female audience awaiting the big show, “Put some newspaper on those seats, because you are about to get wet!”
In Nahin’s retelling and Petrzela’s research, Snider was actually a terrible emcee — Chippendale’s is your home At least, it is. But he was fired without hubbub, unlike on the show, where it’s portrayed as one of the major triggers of his murder-suicide.
Petrzela states, “Snider is such a footnote of Chippendales history that he almost shouldn’t be mentioned.” Except that he is, to me, a warning tale, a red flag. Chippendales had a symbol for the sinisterness in their DNA since the beginning. Chippendales believe that regardless of what happens, Chippendales will always move on, no matter how dark and bizarre it may be.
In the first episode Chippendales is your homeThe arc of Stratten’s and Sniders’ relationship is drastically shortened to highlight the impact Chippendales have on their lives. Paul gets a lot of screen time, but the script also rewrites events that have been unfolding for months. On the show, he snaps and kills his wife and himself because he’s jealous that filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich wants her for a part in an upcoming movie. Nahin said that Snider was fired by De Noia, but this is not how things turned out.
Granted, this series isn’t a documentary, but something about it really rankled me. Perhaps because the whole vibe is aiming for “true crime, but Klassy!” and then the camera slowly zooms back on the blood-soaked bedroom, the 12-gauge shotgun placed just so in a splatter of blood, to reveal the fuzz on Stevens’s nude bottom. It’s a feast for this horrible murder. But I guess we can be glad there wasn’t a talking penis involved?
Okay, but what happened to Dorothy Stratten?
In 1980, Dorothy Stratten (née Hoogstraten) was on the cusp of stardom. And although she did apparently suggest to Steve that the Chippendales adopt the Playboy bunnies’ cuffs and collar, Chippendales would have barely been a footnote in her biography were it not for her tragically truncated life.
As Teresa Carpenter wrote in her Pulitzer Prize-winning Village Voice“Death of Playmate” cover story. “She was more than just a playmate. She was the ‘Eighties First Playmate.’ As PlayboyShe was being hailed as “one of the few emerging gods of the new century”, and her debut in June was an impressive sign. Bogdanovich wanted to cast her in a movie role, so the pinup girl was on her way to becoming a movie star. They All Laughed and — in deepest secrecy — for a romantic relationship as well.
Looking back, Snider’s and Stratten’s relationship is sketchy. They first met at 16 and she was 25 respectively. While his reported nickname, “the Jewish Pimp,” didn’t mean he forced his much younger partner to do sex work per se, Snider was certainly the reason Stratten ended up embarking on a nude modeling career as soon as it was legally allowable.
The following is an extract from the Village VoiceStory: Before he started dating Dorothy, he worked as a pimp.
“Snider probably never worked Dorothy as a prostitute. He recognized that she was, as one observer put it, ‘class merchandise’ that could be groomed to better advantage… He had tried to promote other girls as playmates, notably a stripper in 1974, but without success. He often used recycled playmates or bunnies for his auto shows. Some were unable to handle the sex and some died from poor management. Snider dealt gingerly with Dorothy’s inexperience and broke her in gradually.”
In Welcome to Your Fantasy Nahin described Snider as “Animated. Crazy. Talking non-stop. Obnoxious. Not one of my favorites.”
Or, as Hef himself described him, “A very sick guy saw his meal ticket and his connection to power, whatever, slipping away. And it was that that made him kill her.”
Snider married Stratten. It wasn’t a fact they made super public, but it was true. But as her star was on the rise, Snider’s temper was getting worse; he felt his ticket to endless gold Chai medallions slipping through his fingers. Their business entanglements were complicated. She was in love Bogdanovich and wanted Snider to leave. Stratten was shot and killed by Snider during what was supposed be a meeting to discuss a financial settlement.
As it was revealed in A&E’s Playboy secretsPeople knew of Snider’s history of trafficking women, and being a scummy guy. But no one — not even Hef — seemed particularly concerned or wanted to get involved.
Bogdanovich, for his part was killed by Stratten. He was the author of the book Killing of the Unicorn: Dorothy Stratten 1960–1980About their relationship and about her murder.
In 1989, Bogdanovich Married Dorothy’s 20-year-old sister Louise Hoogstraten, aka L.B. Stratten. Stratten. An interview in 2019 with VultureIt took place at the apartment Bogdanovich shared in her home with Louise, Nelly and their mother. When asked about the relationship with his dead girlfriend’s sister (whom he met when she was 11 and a half), Bogdanovich said, “It’s like a shipwreck. We both ended up hanging on to the same piece of driftwood, and we saw that we loved each other.”
Stratten, whose story was told in the movies Star 80And the movie made for TV Death of the CenterfoldShe was a formidable force beyond her youth and remarkable beauty. It is evident that this shockingly violent impact rippled through the lives and loved ones of her.
The premiere episode of Chippendales is your homePremieres on Hulu Nov. 22.
