Louann Fernald

[masque51]

Here is Louann's story from a Dorothy Stratten fan site. It looks like it could be real.


Louann's Story

Being Louann

By the time we reached the stadium, the strap on my purse had cut a painful notch into my shoulder. Feeling like a fool, I was reminded how stupid I had been to drag along the biggest purse among us – a purse large enough to hold six beers. But greater than the pain was the fear the bottles sloshing away inside would suddenly explode. And the sloshing could not be helped as we pushed and shoved our way through the overflowing crowd. After all, what I was doing was illegal. There were cops mixed in with all the revelers – part of the decadent pandemonium of 60,000 football fans roaring to the top of their lungs. It was a test to see if they could out shout the sound of the loudest band south of Atlanta – horns and drums beating out the notes of the Gators’ fight song – Daaa dadadadada Go! Gators!

We squeezed inside the stadium just as our football team charged onto the field – cheerleaders turning somersaults, an Alligator mascot leading the deafening roar. Stomping and shouting fans joined in with the gator chomp as we pushed and shoved our way to our seats.

It had been less than 24 hours since I arrived in rowdy Gainesville. This was the season’s kick-off game. SMU had come to town and my lifeguard hunk Frank Cook was initiating me to the rites of passage for newcomers. He was a returning senior and first year medical student who knew his way around town. He drove me back and forth, showing me the sights on and off campus. This was the weekend of Sorority Rushes and Frat Pledges, and we had a full schedule of parties and events.

But for now it was football, and while we sat there screaming with the best, someone produced a flask of Southern Comfort. We drank it with the beers and came pretty close to getting drunk while the Florida Gators sent the SMU Mustangs running back to Dallas with their tails between their legs.

For me, this was the “jail break” of my dreams. My parents were 170 miles away, and I was suddenly the only one looking out for my best interests. Fun was at the top of my list. I was too immature to realize the University of Florida didn’t give a hoot in hell if I went to class. No one but family gave a damn if I got an education. If I failed my courses the University of Florida would still gladly take my parents’ money.

For the first time in my life no one was there to make sure I got to class on time, to make sure I studied. About the only thing I had going for me was Frank Cook, and even that was “good news and bad news.” He was a medical student and I was pre-med, and he tried to help me through my studies, but, being a womanizer, he wasn’t about to steer me clear of the partying pitfalls.

By the end of fall semester, I nearly flunked out. My parents put me on notice the money would stop coming if my grades didn’t pick up, but old free and popular me was the life of the party. Anywhere the laughs and beer flowed, “Six-Pack Louannie” had a reserved seat.

Coming from my strict and uptight background, my freshman year was a rebellion and a disaster waiting to happen. I refused to accept one simple fact. There were 3,000 pre-med students enrolled at the University of Florida, and they would be pared down to only 75. Even with excellent grades I had only one chance in 40 of getting into medical school.

And adding to my mounting setbacks, I soon realized I wasn’t the only filly in Frank Cook’s stable. Not only was he smart and at the top of his class, Frank was just about the greatest looking hunk on campus. He was obviously an outstanding future surgeon destined for a fat and high-end practice on Florida’s Gold Coast. Every woman joining the chase for Frank was after one thing, marriage with credit cards without limits.

Well the good times kept rolling and my parents kept warning and then for sure the sun finally rose on Doomsday! The day all my party chickens came home to roost. My parents stopped the checks, and that first summer, I had no choice but to move back in with my parents in the middle of an orange grove. My family had sold our Cocoa Beach home and moved miles from my friends. It felt like I was in a straightjacket. I didn’t have a car so I went out looking for any job that would pay a buck. It was now very clear if I wished to return to the University of Florida, I had to earn enough money to keep me there. Thankfully my Dad worked for MIT and they paid my tuition, but I needed cash for rent and food. I saved every dime I earned and in the fall I was back in Gainesville.

Pre-med was history. I regrouped and focused on Journalism and Public Relations. Studies were going better and the last memory I had of Frank Cook was me crying while he insisted we play strip poker. I knew afterward he was driving to Tampa to spend New Year’s Eve with another girlfriend. Medical students may have rotations, but this medical student was rotating me with a nursing student, a pharmacy student, a sorority girl, another beach girl, and still taking new applications.

It was strange. In spite of all his philandering I knew Frank cared for me. I was not just one of his daily conquests. But in the “Free Love World” of the late 1970s, and as the “male god of campus,” he insisted on the pleasures of his kingdom.

When my second fall semester had passed and I returned to Gainesville heartbroken from the holidays thanks to Frank, my girlfriend Janet and I went out to a place called Nichol’s Alley. Their biggest promotion was Nickel Beer Night – a beer for five cents. It was just what we struggling students could afford, but more important, it was where I would meet the next love of my life.

Standing in the line for a five cent beer was what we in Cocoa Beach called a “smokin’ hot surfer dude.” A golden and blonde John Travolta with a smile as wide as September and half of Florida. I was instantly aware my heart had stopped. It simply refused to beat if I didn’t promise to speak to this perfect creature. Then, a scruffy, demanding stranger came between us. “Here,” he ordered, handing me a nickel. “Get me a beer.”

Fate comes in strange faces and places. Now I had an excuse to walk back past that foxy guy and tell him, “I’m going to abscond with that idiot’s beer!”

Surfer Dude smiled, his blue eyes twinkling. “I like your vocabulary,” he quipped and we wrapped our legs around tall stools at a beer table only for two. I soon learned his name was Chip Clark. He was a pre-law student, and time stood still as we set spellbound, sharing our life stories with each other. I felt a comfortable familiarity as if we were soul mates. Three hours had past when I finally remembered Janet, my ride. She had been waiting patiently, and Chip and I exchanged phone numbers.

Emancipated at nineteen, I had found a job as a waitress. I was working 40-hours a week, but in a college town, the tips were slim and none.

The next morning, Chip found me at the restaurant where I worked and I fed him breakfast. In the coming days and weeks, Chip would become a stabilizing force in my life. He had to make straight “A”s to get admitted into law school. We would study separately, but take steamy study breaks together.

Frank kept coming around, wanting me back, but there was no way. He even asked me to marry him but I wasn’t about to trade a “blue chipper” for a one-way ticket to Heartbreak Hotel. I’ll always be grateful to Frank for all he did for me, and even today, he lives in a soft spot in my heart. It wasn’t his fault the gods made him so damn good looking.

After six months of Chip and I focusing on our studies, my parents took pity on me and gave me a second-hand car.

Things were looking up even though I had no money to buy clothes. My friends gave me their hand-me-downs and I didn’t care. In my mind, I didn’t have to compete with the sorority girls, those self-appointed arbiters of fashion with their designer clothes. I had the most important fashion accessory – a “bod for sin.”

The only leisure activity I could afford was going to the beach with Chip and watching him surf. He was a champion. Ranked at the top in east coast surfing competitions. When I tired of watching him ride the waves and curls, I would dive into the surf myself for a swim or go for a barefoot run. All I needed to be on the top of the world was my bikini, my golden tan and my golden surfer.

Not having money was tough but Chip and I didn’t care. We kept studying, and I kept serving tables, and I kept getting pinched, groped, whistled at and stiffed by customers as broke as me until the night my boss grabbed me in the kitchen and stuck his tongue down my throat. Stunned and nauseated, I gagged and immediately starting thinking of a new way to make survival wages. There simply was no way I could quit. I had to find another job first, and coming home from work late one night smelling like a combination of ashtrays and garbage cans, I first heard Playboy was coming to town. The newspaper said they were coming to search for the 25th Anniversary Playmate in the Great Playmate Hunt.

I quietly recalled my 10-year-old experience with dad’s Playboys, but quickly began entertaining some serious thoughts. The word was Playboy would pay $25,000 for the 25th Anniversary Playmate, and $10,000 for a Playmate of the Month, expenses included. There would be other modeling fees and it was all beginning to sound good to my tired bod. After all, if I put this tired “bod for sin” to work, it would get me out of that pit of groping hands and crude overtures, especially the ones by the boss. But more importantly, it would mean I would have all the money I would need to get my degree.

I had uncovered a small stash of Playboys my boyfriend had hidden in the closet. In the privacy of my bedroom, I looked at my reflection in the full-length mirror and compared myself to the women in the photos. Could I measure up? I thought I could.

In coming days many told me I should meet with the Playboy photographer and try out. Even strangers would stop me on the street with the same suggestion. Publicly, I said “No, I could never do that!” Privately, I was giving it serious consideration. The bottom line came down to the fact I needed an income other than waiting tables. Stuck in a moral dilemma, my curious side was winning. Without telling anyone, I decided to go see for myself.

I put my bikini in my purse and drove down to the Hilton. Veteran Playboy photographer Dwight Hooker was there, being interviewed by a local newspaper reporter. I walked through the door and photographer Hooker looked at me and smiled. “Here she is!”

What I didn’t know then was, the reporter had just asked him how he would know if he saw a Playmate? I went into the bathroom and changed into my bikini while they continued the interview without me. When I walked out again, Mr. Hooker stood up, smiled and shook my hand, telling me I was lovely, beautiful smile, blah, blah, blah.

Warming up to him, I followed the photographer out to the pool, where he expertly posed me, shoulder here, elbow there. He only took five Polaroids and in less than ten minutes I was on my way. “Well,” I said to myself, “That’s the end of that.”

Three weeks later the phone rang. A very friendly woman with a perky voice asked, “Is this Louann Fernald?”

“Yes.”

“This is Playboy calling from Chicago. We’ve gotten your pictures and we think you are very cute and we would like to fly you up here to do some more test shooting. We’ll pay you $250.00 per day for two days. We’ll send you a plane ticket and we’ll put you up at the Playboy Hotel, all expenses paid.”

She finally took a breath.

“Are you interested?”

“Yes,” I quickly answered. “Could I call you back?”

“Certainly,” the perky woman chirped and gave me her number.

Stunned, I slumped in my chair. What an unexpected gift from the blue. $500.00 for two days? Heavens, that’s a month and a half of waiting on tables, and suddenly I was feeling good. I was surprised at how right the offer felt, but yet I knew there were questions to be asked and answered.

Chip came home and I brought him up-to-date. We sat down to talk about it but we both knew the question! Wasn’t there something immoral that I had to overcome or ignore before I took my clothes off for the camera? Shouldn’t I have a twinge of guilt? Or, at least, the fear of having my morals judged? But, with my history of two years of waiting on tables for sore feet and a handful of dimes, I knew that answer! It was a justified no!

And what I knew for certain was that I wasn’t a bad person. I was thoughtful and did my best not to hurt others. In all my decisions I had one simple rule:

Was it fair to all concerned?

And about the question of nudity itself, where I grew up most women paraded about in their bathing suits. My appearing nude was a very short stretch away from jogging up and down the beach in a string bikini. Perhaps if I had grown up somewhere more conservative, I would have felt more self-conscious, or have been more afraid of social judgment. But I was immersed in the culture of a liberal college town where sexy equaled social approval.

But still I was concerned. Concerned more on a visceral level the same as you might feel while jumping out of a plane – the fear of the unknown. I figured nude pictures in a magazine would go away after a few weeks, forgotten and discarded. In 1978, I did not envision the Internet. I doubt most people did.

I suppose I was waiting for someone in a position of authority to say this will be disastrous for your life. No such person appeared. Not even Chip. He couldn’t find any reason to say “No.”

Suddenly I realized it really was my decision. Only my decision, and I would have to live with it. Having survived my childhood and subsequent emancipation, I had become more inwardly directed, and now that I was twenty years old, I was not too concerned about what other people thought of me. The immediate and material reward would get me off my tired feet, I reasoned. Posing for Playboy would help me survive. The $500.00 I would make in the next two days was an immediate fortune. I reached for the phone. “Hi, this is Louann Fernald in Gainesville,” I spoke with my best smile. “Of course I would be pleased to fly to Chicago for more test shots. Thank you for asking.”

As the old saying goes, good luck comes in bunches. My dad was beginning to help me financially again, and as I waited to fly north, it soon became clear that out of all the girls who went for the Playboy test shoots in Gainesville, I was the only one invited for a second look.

The possibilities were rolling out in front of me, like a soft and cushy red carpet.

Chicago!

My first big city.

I was given a tour of the Playboy offices and studios. The staff was a group of skilledprofessionals. They put me at ease when they told me that each month at least 6,000 women sent in their photos, all wanting to be a Playmate.

There were other girls there like myself. We had all been flown in to test shoot and compete for the 25th Anniversary Playmate title. That was the big one. $25,000 to the winner instead of the $10,000 paid to the Playmate of the Month.

Dwight Hooker, the photographer who had shot my Polaroids in Gainesville, took me under his wing. He was one of those extraordinary people who made you feel protected, and together, along with a female stylist and his assistant, we drove to the set location for the shoot. My knees were jelly and my teeth busied themselves with a quiet chatter, but there sat Dwight behind the wheel and I told myself all was well.

On location, Dwight gently coaxed and coached me as I slowly began to relax and peel away the layers of silk and lace as lighting angles, makeup, pose, and props were expertly adjusted. Although the surroundings were different, I felt a familiar feeling, and realized it was as if I was seeing my doctor for a checkup.

My naked body was the focus here, just like it was in the doctor’s office. It was awkward but professional. Dwight had set up screens so only the camera and the makeup lady could see me. But I still felt uncomfortable. The camera was much the same as the doctor peeping under the sheet.

The hours passed slowly and I could not help but be impressed with the care to detail Dwight was taking. When the shooting finally began, my feelings could best be described as being “in denial.” I chose to stare into space. I did not want to think about what the camera was seeing. This way I could only feel aggravated by Dwight’s instructions – elbow here, suck in your stomach, pout your lips, relax your face, hold that pose, etc, etc, etc . . . I was feeling exposed and vulnerable and I just wanted to get it done with. I wanted to finish up and get out of there with my clothes on.

Finally, after what seemed two eternities, Dwight approached me with the Polaroid prints.

He had worked magic. I wasn’t looking at myself. I was looking at the girl next door having a pleasurable bath. There was no shame. No sin. Only wholesomeness. I was suddenly proud.

It was tough for me to believe I was looking at myself. Amazing what lighting and camera techniques can do. I never thought I could look that good. Feeling no attachment, I imagined the image I was looking at was not me, it was merely Playboy’s interpretation of me.

I was still floating on Cloud Nine when we got back to the studio. There Janice Moses, the photo editor, studied the Polaroids and informed me they would like to keep me for a few extra days and shoot a centerfold for the upcoming October issue. The month was rapidly approaching and the position of “Miss October” was unfilled. My fee was raised to $500 per day and as I counted how many weeks of school that would pay, I phoned Chip, told him I would be gone a few more days.

“That’s awesome, babe,” he shouted. “Go for it!”

“I will,” I promised, throwing him a kiss down the line.

I placed the phone back in its cradle and felt my body sink into the chair. The first relaxation of the day was welcome, but I still had one major worry! Were my parents going to show up with handcuffs and chains?


Being a Playmate

Everyone is talking.

I’m suddenly the buzz on the University of Florida’s forward thinking campus.

Sightings of Playboy’s future Playmate are reported on radio and television. Even in the local newspaper. My friends, my professors, even people I do not know suggest they should manage my career. What career? My centerfold was yet to be published, but suddenly inside the University of Florida’s College of Journalism I’m the hot practice interview. And, surprise! Surprise! My parents are caught up in my newly acquired fame.

They gave me a kiss and their approval.

I was one happy camper. No time in my life before had events gone so well.

I kept up with my studies even though hitting the books was suddenly a chore. When I traveled, I took my class work along. I flew three more times to Chicago and once to Key West for more centerfold shoots. Surprisingly, modeling and promotions offers with other Playmates were suddenly bringing money in even before my issue was published.

That magical date was May 1st, 1979. By then, I had taken a sabbatical from Gainesville to stay with Chip in a small beach town for some anonymity. In those days Playboy was sold in the open. No brown wrappers hidden under the counter, and as sunup grew closer, I became more nervous. Who wouldn’t be anxious, knowing they were about to appear naked in front of millions across America. It was terrifying, actually. I had no idea how people would react.

How would my life change?

Would it be for the better as promised or – What the hell, how could it matter now?

My fat was in the fire and I spent most of the day the magazine hit the stands on the beach with supportive friends. That night Chip and I were off to a cocktail party. Those who knew me were acting pretty much the same as they always did, but I was later told that when I wasn’t looking there were lots of whispering and commotion.

This went on most everywhere for the next few months and I convinced myself to relax behind my best and warmest smile. From the class nerd to Playmate of the Month was a big adjustment and that summer I was invited to attend the 25th Anniversary Playmate Reunion with a guest.

Chip smiled and said, “Where’s my tux?” and we flew to the west coast where a limousine picked us up at the airport along with other Playmate couples.

The reunion was a three-day affair at the Playboy Mansion in Holmby Hills in Bellaire. It was the largest gathering of Playmates ever, and Chip and I tried not to embarrass ourselves as we rubbed elbows with movie stars, producers, sports figures, and celebrities – a composite collection of who’s who.

Once the reunion was over, Chip and I hopped into a rental and drove down the coast. We spent several days there – time enough to fall in love with southern California. I had to finish summer semester at Gainesville first, and then we were golden, ready to head west.

I returned alone to Los Angeles in October and stayed at the Mansion for several days while searching for an apartment. Hugh Hefner’s girlfriend at the time, a lovely, outgoing Playmate, approached me in the palatial foyer to ask me if I wanted to sleep with her and Hef?

“No,” I answered. “I’m not in into casual sex.”

“Fine,” she smiled and walked away, her high heels clicking across the shiny marble floor.

That was the first and last overture I ever received from Hef, directly or indirectly. Two of my close Playmate girlfriends who I knew had slept with Hef and sported handsome necklaces with their names emblazoned in diamonds, gifts from the publisher.

The staff and personnel at the Mansion were cordial and professional. Stars from film and television walked in and out along with movers and shakers from all walks of life. The Mansion’s grounds were kept immaculate. There was an aviary, a small zoo, a 30-foot-high monkey cage, and a menagerie of animals small and large. I instinctively knew I was one of the attractions too, and uneasily felt I was in over my depth.

Hef’s friends were men much older than us Playmates. They all seemed to be in the practice of having romances with a revolving door of new girls. One night I was taken to the roller rink in a Rolls Royce by a movie star’s ex-husband, who was a regular at the Mansion. It was not long before I learned a Playmate’s stay there was a slippery slope. Some stayed a short time, some stayed a long while, and some never stayed at all.

It seemed that new Playmates kept bumping the older ones out while Hef’s friends stayed the same, growing older. Speaking of competition between the girls, one kitchen staff member cryptically commented to me, “it’s a game where if you win, you lose.”

Some girls fought over Hef, but I kept my distance and never felt any pressure. Hef was a kind and generous host who always treated me with deference and respect.

I found an apartment in West Los Angeles, paid the deposit, and returned to Florida to gather up my life and my golden surfer. Chip and I piled our stuff into our cars, and with a tow bar hooked to his Dodge topped with his quiver of surfboards and my Pontiac began the long tow to California.


Dorothy

We reached the west coast just in time for me to work a promotion in Long Beach. We drove down to the car show at the Convention Center, where with Chip in his jeans and me in my head-to-toe black spandex Playmate uniform, we met up with Dorothy Stratten, Miss August.

Dorothy was wearing a big smile, big blonde hair, and the same Playmate outfit. She introduced me to her husband, Paul Snider. He too was wearing spandex. Pants, cowboy boots, a shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest with a cluster of thick gold chains around his neck. It seemed as if he was competing with Dorothy for the spotlight.

Chip and I introduced ourselves. On first impression, I was intimidated by Dorothy’s height. At five foot nine, she stood over six feet with high heels.

I was five inches shorter, where, in the world of modeling, five inches can make or break a career. Dorothy could easily have had a lucrative career as a fashion model. I, on the other hand, was too short to be much of a contender.

Dorothy and I moved up onto the stage where a table and chairs waited. We took our seats and began signing a stack of pictures for the men waiting in line.

We signed away, laughingly trying to one-up the other with flirts and the sweetest autographs. Many requested we have our pictures taken with them and it was an afternoon of good entertainment. Dorothy was a combination of genuine, sweet, kind, and unassuming, mixed with sparkle and flair. She was beautiful and fun.

We worked together all weekend.

She had just moved to Los Angeles from Vancouver with her husband Paul. They had just gotten married after being together for three years and I thought she was rather young for such a commitment. She was only eighteen years old. She had to get her mother’s
permission to pose for Playboy at age seventeen, Paul’s idea.

He had come into the Dairy Queen where she was working at fifteen years of age, bought
an ice cream cone, and, in her words, swept her off her feet. He was wearing a full-length fur coat and driving an expensive sports car. Then, she said, he showered her with jewelry and gifts. To me, she appeared older and more sophisticated than her age.

I could best describe Paul as a nightclub promoter. He was always cooking up schemes and promotions and it was his idea to send Dorothy’s nude pictures to Playboy. They took the hook, and Paul moved Dorothy to Los Angeles and began master minding her career.

Dorothy started out working as a Bunny at the Playboy Club in Century City.

Paul became her manager and she became Miss August.

Next, he organized and produced the “Most Beautiful Man in Los Angeles Contest,” and the four of us drove to a nightclub in Marina del Ray. Dorothy and I were the celebrity judges for the male stripper contest. The contestants were strikingly handsome, and they were highly entertaining. They stripped down to their G-strings, danced for dollars, and Dorothy and I chose the winner. It was hilarious.

Afterwards, we all exchanged hugs and air kisses, and the male strippers quickly left together arm-in-arm, and Dorothy and I laughed over the knowledge that the ‘most beautiful men in Los Angeles’ were obviously gay.

This was where the idea for Chippendale’s and its male strippers originated.

Paul and Dorothy lived near us in West L. A. and this was the beginning of a friendship that would last for less than a year – the end coming with Dorothy and Paul’s death on August 14th, 1980.

After we finished working the car show in Long Beach, Dorothy and I drove home in my car together and Chip rode back with Paul.

During the two-hour drive she told me she had been selected Playmate of the Year. I congratulated her, and hid my disappointment. I had secretly hoped to be Playmate of the Year. Every Playmate wants to be Playmate of the Year because the prizes and money and promotional value are worth several hundred thousands of dollars. Dorothy continued, saying she felt bad because none of the other Playmates wanted to be her friend. Slowly, my disappointment dissolved into sympathy and admiration for this sweet and guileless person.

As I drove, we talked about our lives, our families, our men, our careers and our experiences with Playboy.

It was instantly a comfortable and trusting friendship and in the coming days Dorothy and I would meet for coffee, lunch, shopping, and exercise classes with Richard Simmons. This was before he was famous. We would walk into the exercise studio, put our mats on the floor, and wait for class to begin. Richard would sashay in, and upon seeing Dorothy would shout in his sing song voice, “Dorothy’s gonna’ be a Sta-ar! Dorothy’s gonna’ be a Sta-ar!”

Dorothy was modest. She was always embarrassed as the class filled up and we began to exercise. Afterwards, she told me that Paul always gave her a hard time about not being in good enough shape and she could never lose those final five pounds. She would wear sweatpants and a sweatshirt hoping to lose weight by sweating if off and we would debate the better ways of getting in top shape. She told me she wished she enjoyed jogging as much as I did, but her breasts were too heavy and it was uncomfortable. Looking down at my comparatively small chest, I thought, ‘well everything in life is a tradeoff.’

We would gripe about our Playmate outfits. The designers had gone to great lengths to give us voluminous cleavage with plunging push-up bras and a cinch waist so tight you could hardly breathe. We would commiserate about how annoying it was that when a guy was trying to have a conversation with you while you were signing an autograph, he was looking at your chest instead of your face. The spike high heels were cruel torture chambers for our feet. We would share make-up techniques. I loved the way Dorothy did her make-up. She was always being photographed by the latest and the best hot photographer and made up by the latest and the best makeup stylist. If I was to ever be jealous of another woman, Dorothy was her and it was hard not to be envious when she told me Playboy was sending her all expenses paid to spend a few days at La Costa, a world renowned health spa down the coast. Marilyn Grabowski, the West Coast photo editor, was going along. Dorothy was going to lose that infamous five pounds before her Playmate of the Year shoot.

Our friendship grew and soon Dorothy, Paul, Chip and I were a regular foursome on the Hollywood scene – usually speeding through the streets in Paul’s gold Mercedes. He was an aggressive driver. He liked to take chances. Dorothy would look over her shoulder and laugh and roll her eyes at us as if to say, we’re along for the ride, so we may as well enjoy it.

Dorothy and I frequently flew together. We were booked on many of the same large promotions where four to six Playmates would work. Sometimes it was a car show, the opening of a Playboy Club, or an annual event most anywhere. We worked conventions in Portland, Phoenix, Dallas, and Denver. There was one evening when Candy Loving and I were sitting in Dorothy’s room talking about acting. Dorothy was sharing acting techniques she was learning from her acting coach, Richard Brander. She explained to us that you didn’t pretend, you just are, you lose yourself in the character. That sounded interesting to me and I decided I would look into it. As soon as we got back to L. A., I phoned Richard Brander and made an appointment.

One thing that was unusual about Paul and Dorothy was their devotion to their pet white rat named Bebe. Paul, ever the oddball, had bought it for Dorothy. It was so tame and spoiled, it was like a surrogate child. The most tender I ever saw Paul Snider was when he was with that rat. He thought the little rodent was a perfect low maintenance pet to suit their busy lifestyles.

Dorothy and Paul were the only married couple Chip and I socialized with and when I was on a radio interview with her in Fort Worth she dropped a surprise. On the air, Dorothy admitted she was only seventeen when she and her mother signed the contract with Playboy. It was then that Paul wanted to marry her and “stake out his turf.” She dryly observed that Paul hadn’t wanted any commitment before. There was no mention of love or a lifetime of devotion. It was cut and dried. They got married because Paul felt it was a business decision.

Dorothy disclosed her father had left her family when she was very young, disappearing from their lives forever. Her mother had returned home from being away on a trip with Dorothy and her brother, only to find her father had abandoned them. Her mother could barely make ends meet trying to maintain the household, and soon remarried. Shortly thereafter, her younger half-sister Louise was born. From what Dorothy told me, even with her stepfather in the house, it was a struggle. Dorothy took the job at the Dairy Queen at the age of fifteen to help ends meet. It seemed that in Paul she saw someone to take care of her, the missing father figure. He bedazzled her with his air of control and in her naive eyes, his sophistication. This was the susceptibility that Paul was able to seize upon that day he walked through the door.

Dorothy’s mother was not happy with Dorothy’s choice to marry Paul and it seemed to me their relationship was strained. Nonetheless, she took me shopping with her to help her pick out a birthday gift for her mom, she was so preoccupied with getting it right. We spent a lot of time, thought, and consideration before she made her choice.

I signed up to take acting lessons with Dorothy’s acting coach Richard Brander in the San Fernando Valley. Dorothy wanted me with her for the long drive. I was more than happy to try to follow in her footsteps. She was already winning roles in feature movies – making $60,000.00 plus – and Svengali Paul oversaw her life, routine, and habits like a strict parent. This was the real reason I was permitted by Paul to have such close access to Dorothy. Paul thought I would be a good influence. I didn’t have overt tendencies to stay up all night and party. I was the total health nut while Chip’s main concern, even though he was now the manager of a local health club, was to get up early and drive up to Malibu for a ride on a few waves.

It seemed nothing could go wrong for Dorothy and we were on a plane coming back from Dallas when she mentioned that Peter Bogdanovich (Hollywood’s hottest full-length movie producer!) had called her. Instantly my ears perked and I sat forward in my seat. “Wow, that’s great,” I said and Dorothy added she had just been on the phone with him for a long time in her hotel room and she was wondering why he was interested in her. Still innocent and believing in the sanctity of marriage myself, I wondered too.

On the one hand, she was married to Paul and by this time I was familiar with his glaring flaws. Paul was overbearing, rude, crude, a former member of the “Hell’s Angels” motorcycle gang who boasted of making his “bones” as a biker. He dressed like a pimp. He was bossy and controlling. He did not permit her to wear jeans or smoke. He was definitely the authority figure in their relationship. He found her. He nurtured her. He made her what she was. That’s the way Paul saw it. Anyone wanting Dorothy had to come through him. Otherwise there would be hell to pay.

I did not tell her that Chip had told me that Paul had approached him to swap me for Dorothy for a night. I was disgusted. This was why I could never be jealous of Dorothy. She was married to a complete ass. Peter Bogdanovich on the other hand was a handsome accomplished man who could help Dorothy make the quantum leap into roles in major motion pictures. It seemed that Dorothy would have to choose her steps carefully so as not to upset Paul. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see Paul was a ticking time bomb.

We went to the Mansion on Backgammon Night and Movie Night. Like myself, Dorothy was uncomfortable going it alone, feeling like a goldfish swimming with barracudas.

Mansion policy dictated only Playmates would attend. Husbands and boyfriends were only invited to the Mansion on very special occasions. This was necessary for Playboy to cultivate and maintain the image of four women to every man at the Mansion. We would go in tandem to the ladies room to ostensibly ‘take a powder’, but in reality to compare notes in the vestibule on the various suits and celebrities we had been speaking with. It was so much easier to be there with a girlfriend for a backup.

The decade of the 80s arrived and I was busier than ever, flying all over the country doing promotions. Dorothy had gone off into her own orbit, making preparations and photo shoots for the upcoming Playmate of the Year issue. We began to see less of each other.

On February 28th, 1980, I attended Dorothy’s twentieth birthday party at her house, where Paul had invited a few select friends. It was to be a low-key, intimate affair. We were all excited about her upcoming Playmate of the Year events. Dorothy had also just learned she had landed a substantive part in Peter Bogdanovich’s new movie “They All Laughed” with Audrey Hepburn and John Ritter, which was to be shot in New York City over the summer.

While the afternoon sun peered through the windows (this was only the first of a roster of parties in Dorothy’s honor that California winter day), Paul was keeping everyone’s champagne glass filled. It was as if he was going to New York for the movie shoot too and I looked over at Dorothy sitting there on the sofa, glowing and looking more beautiful than ever in the soft light. Her life was just too good to be true, I thought.

I smiled at her and whispered to Chip, “She’s like a rocket, just waiting to take off to the stars.”

The last time I ever saw Dorothy alive we had brunch together at the Cheesecake Factory in Beverly Hills. Her Playmate of the Year issue was about to be launched at a special press party in the Mansion. It was May 3rd, 1980. She was radiant and joyous. We talked about what she was going to wear. We had just gone shopping for a pair of gold high-heeled sandals to match the gold belt on her beautiful white dress, and she had shown me the license plate Paul had put on her copper Ford Mustang. It simply read “STAR 80.” It was typical Paul, over the top. We laughed, hugged each other tightly, kisses on the cheek, and she got into her car and drove away.

Soon thereafter, Dorothy flew away to begin the Peter Bogdanovich movie, and Paul was left behind. He came around the apartment frequently that summer to squander the day with Chip. It was the first time he and Dorothy had ever really been apart. All he could do in the meanwhile was sit around and mope. I was traveling extensively at the time, but Chip related to me that Paul had gone up to the Mansion a couple of times but was turned away. It seemed to me Paul was being presumptuous to think he deserved such special treatment. After all, most Playmates’ husbands couldn’t get invited to the Mansion even if their wives brought them. I thought, who the hell did Paul think he was? He was wallowing in a mire of self-pity. Poor pathetic Paul. He could no longer use Dorothy to gain access to Playboy. And yet, always the promoter, Paul tried to reinvent himself again as a manager for starlets who wanted to become Playmates. I saw him several more times over the summer with one or another very young and naive-looking girls in tow. But, none of them ever came anywhere close to Dorothy.

Dorothy’s new Jaguar and other prizes she had received as Playmate of the Year sat untouched in the garage and in the house and Paul told Chip he worried they might be stolen. He borrowed Chip’s small handgun for security. Dorothy and Paul’s house was on the edge of a crime ridden industrial area and I thought maybe Paul had a legitimate concern. Taking into account that Paul had always been strange as far as I could tell, I didn’t think there was anything unusual in his behavior. On the rare occasion I was at home when Paul was hanging out with Chip, I could hear him making comments in passing like, “There’s nothing like a gram of cocaine to improve your attitude.” I tried to ignore him and avoided him as much as I could. Chip, who I always thought was too soft-hearted, would listen and give Paul an audience.

I didn’t know Paul’s unhappiness about being left behind was such a strain on his and Dorothy’s relationship. One day he came over while I was there and, after conversing with Chip, casually asked me if I would like to say ‘hi’ to Dorothy. Of course I did, and I fell blindly into the trap.

He gave me the phone number to call her at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan where he said she was staying. I retired into my bedroom for some privacy and dialed the number. A switchboard operator answered the phone after a few rings, and after hearing my request, brusquely took my name and put me on hold. A few moments later, Dorothy came on the line. She sounded tired. We spoke briefly, but as soon as I told her Paul had given me her number and that he was at my apartment, she became quiet and distant. Meanwhile, Paul had silently entered the room and motioned me to hand him the phone. Startled at the invasion and not wanting to be alone with Paul in the bedroom, I gave him the phone and hurried out of the room, shutting the door behind me.

That would be the last time I would ever speak to Dorothy.

Looking back on it now, I can understand why Dorothy never contacted me when she returned to Los Angeles. The word was out on the street that she was leaving Paul for Peter. I had been manipulated by Paul to get her on the phone with him. Dorothy did not know then, and she will never know, I never broke the trust between us. My biggest regret, a burden I will carry for the rest of my life, is that I hadn’t known what was going on, and if I had, perhaps I could have helped prevent her from stepping into a tragedy of such shocking and epic proportions.

Things weren’t working out for my Chip in L. A., and he decided to return to Florida. On August 7th, 1980, the day I took him to the airport, we stopped at Dorothy and Paul’s house to reclaim his handgun. I was waiting outside in the car, not wanting to see Paul, when the sound of a gunshot pierced the air, startling me. I glanced over to see Chip and Paul walking down the sidewalk together. Paul had just shot the pistol in the air for kicks. I was rattled, and didn’t think it was funny. Driving away, I felt relief, and was thankful I would not have to encounter Paul ever again. I had no idea how permanent that thought would be.

We reached the airport and during the last few minutes before he boarded his plane, Chip gave me the handgun, showing me the safety and instructed me on to use it. I was going to be living by myself for the first time in Los Angeles. He told me that Paul had confided to him that he had taken the gun and driven up to the top of Mulholland Drive where he sat for a long time, holding the gun to his head, contemplating suicide. Hearing this news sent a shiver down my spine and I shoved the thought into that corner of my mind where I tried to lose things that I knew and wished I didn’t know.

The next week was lonely. I spent most of the time boxing up Chip’s belongings and shipping them to him in Florida. It was the middle of August and one smoggy afternoon, I was driving down Sunset Boulevard when suddenly I felt an inexplicably sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Certain I was having an anxiety attack, I waited a couple of minutes and then felt it pass. Such a horrific feeling I had never felt before. I shrugged it off. This feeling I did not care to remember.

I woke up to waves of nausea again early the following morning when the phone rang. It was my friend, Playmate Candy Loving.

“Louann, did you hear the news?” she cried into the phone.

“Hear what?”

“Dorothy,” she wept. “She’s been shot! I had to call you, I couldn’t stop thinking about you!”

Time stopped.

It seemed as if an eternity passed and I watched lint particles dance in the early morning rays peeping through the window shades, etching their images permanently in my mind.

I asked Candy if Dorothy made it and she couldn’t answer. Neither of us could manage words and I hung up the phone and called the Mansion. Deep down inside I prayed for someone to tell me she was lying in a hospital recovering.

“Is it true,” I croaked out the words to the person on the other end. “Has Dorothy been shot?”

“Yes,” came the sober answer.

“Well,” I gasped, “How is she?”

“She didn’t make it.”

Choking, I hung up the phone and collapsed sobbing onto the bed. There I lay for hours, curled up into a fetal position, wails echoing off the walls. My reality as I knew it began to crash in around me. My mind simply could not wrap itself around the terrible news. Swirling out of control, everything spinning, upside down – my hopes, values, aspirations, and most of all my dreams were rushing away into a bottomless pit never again to be seen.

Dorothy Stratten had been my role model. She was the sweetest person I knew. She deserved all the joys that a long happy life in this world could bestow and now she was shot and she was dead. I did not want to know the details. All I cared about was I would never see Dorothy alive again.

In the coming hours and days I would learn the wretched circumstances of Dorothy’s death. I heard through friends she had decided to go see Paul at his house to talk, in order to dissolve their marriage amicably. That was typical Dorothy. But in this instance, her kindness clouded her judgment. And now her husband had killed her with a shotgun before taking his own miserable life.

I didn’t want to hear anything more. I did not want to know the morbid details of how my beautiful friend spent her last moments. When approached by the people who wanted to make movies or documentaries, I balked and refused to talk. My memories of Dorothy were mine alone and not for sale. This narrative is the first time I have written, or shared memories about my sweet friend. From my vantage point, she had the world by the tail before she even turned twenty years of age.

Beauty, fame, fortune and love – all were lost in a split horrifying second. I was hopelessly devastated. What on earth did it mean? Fame is empty? Beauty is a liability? Where is Dorothy’s beautiful soul now, I wondered in vain. No one but a lucky few knew what a beautiful sweet person she was on the inside, almost angelic, and mature way beyond her years. The world would never know the human side of Dorothy, the one I knew and loved. The Dorothy I would see with no makeup in sweat pants when I opened my front door in the morning, who would always give me a big smile, a hug and a kiss before she came inside for coffee and we began our day.

Completely heartbroken, I lost any trace of ambition I might have had to succeed in Hollywood. I was only doing it because Dorothy was there, blazing the trail. But now she was dead and I was a zombie, forcing myself to go on casting calls until it became clear it was just a dehumanizing waste of time.

The constant rejection of casting directors seemed to be telling me something. Even the promotions I continued to work for Playboy had a bitter taste. They too were without meaning or luster. There had to be something else, I thought, amid the turbulent stream of events which passed me by during the following weeks and months.

I found myself more often quietly sitting still and reflecting upon the events leading up to the present. Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, in the echoes and deep chambers of my heart, I began to feel a tug from the family I had left behind, forgotten. Suddenly the ocean breezes and balmy nights of Florida were calling.

Home. Home, that’s the place to lose the pain, erase the past, and find a new start.

Home is where you can never be turned way. Home where mind and body can mend.

That’s where I’ll go I thought.

I’ll go home.

[KissArmy]

I don't think it's real. A good read yes, but too dramatic, too well-written, and it does not match up with some of the content of her P-mate pictorial article. And I had a friend who was at the University of Florida at the same time she was, and he said the reason she left the U of F was because she got sexually harassed so bad once her P***boy issue came out.