Star 80

For those who never knew her, the tragic tale of Dorothy Stratten seems natural movie material. Dorothy left a job behind a Dairy Queen counter in Vancouver, British Columbia, became our Playmate of the Year in 1980 and was setting out on what promised to be a glittering movie career. Then she was shot and killed by her husband, Paul Snider, who subsequently took his own life. Since then, her story has taken on a number of lives of its own.

First there was Playboy's detailed account (May 1981), Dorothy Stratten: Her Story, by Richard Rhodes. Then there was a 1981 made-for-TV movie, Death of a Centerfold: The Dorothy Stratten Story, with Jamie Lee Curtis. Still to come is director Peter Bogdanovich's biography of Dorothy, The Killing of the Unicorn, based on his brief relationship with her. Now, already screening in some cities, there is Bob Fosse's film Star 80.

Fosse, who directed Lenny, Cabaret and All That Jazz, has chosen to center his film on the Snider character (played to fearful perfection in Star 80 by Eric (text concluded on page 244)Star 80(continued from page 165) Roberts). Fosse's direction follows Snider's development from small-change troublemaker to obsessive psychotic--much as Martin Scorsese did with Robert De Niro's Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. Cinematographer Sven Nykvist's camera, however, often seems entranced with Mariel Hemingway's Dorothy, and there is no question that Fosse and company have given their female lead an authentic Playmate look.

The Fosse team enlisted the aid of Playboy Contributing Photographer Mario Casilli--who has produced 56 Playmate layouts--to give Star 80 that look. Casilli's centerfold-style photos of Hemingway appear throughout the movie, as well as on these pages. Fosse's choice of photographer was not just happenstance; neither was it without a touch of irony. Casilli had photographed Dorothy for our August 1979 gatefold.

For Hemingway, fresh from a demanding role as a young athlete in Personal Best, landing her new role required a trace of obsession. After reading for Fosse in New York, she wrote the director a letter expressing her desire to play the role. She got another reading, this time in Hollywood, where he was busy auditioning other actresses.

"It was funny," she recalls. "I'd call Bob and leave a message on his answering machine saying that the other girls weren't right for the role." One day, duded up in leotards for an exercise class, she knocked on Fosse's door. When he poked his head out, she struck a pose familiar to every centerfold. "See?" she said, "I even have the right shape."

Hemingway demonstrated the seriousness of her interest by having her breasts augmented. The surgery was her own idea.

Star 80's female lead had to wage battle for her role, but Cliff Robertson had an easy time landing his. John F. Kennedy had requested that Robertson play him in PT 109; Hugh Hefner had a similar request for Star 80, which Fosse granted. An Academy Award winner for Charly, Robertson turns in a fine performance, and Playboy Senior Editor Gretchen McNeese asked him recently about the experience.

"There's a little extra responsibility in playing somebody everybody feels he already knows," Robertson said. "It's quite evident to me that Hef has always retained his Midwestern roots and is sure of who he is and where he comes from. Probably, as a young man, he saw the discrepancy between what people pretended and what they did when it came to sex, and that hypocrisy made a big impression.

"You know, I've played everything from astronauts to retardates, but I found it rather distracting to work on that picture. There I was, wearing, as Hefner is wont to do, silk pajamas. To walk onto the set at eight o'clock in the morning with that sinuous sort of thing on my body and have about 75 gorgeous nymphets descend upon me, saying, 'Hi, Hef, baby,' as they were supposed to do--well, that's every middle-aged man's fantasy, and it was fantastic. I notice that my wife calls a lot more lately."

Does Star 80 work? Not as well as we hoped it would. By focusing on the character of Paul Snider, Fosse gives him a three-dimensional quality that all the others lack. What we are left with is an unbalanced, updated version of An American Tragedy. We can't help thinking that it would have been more interesting to do Dorothy's tragedy. Her story defies clichés about life in the fast lane; she was a contemporary figure, a woman who defined her goals and expressed her ambition without losing her charm. The film neglects her growth and much of her humanity. Snider was a murderer who had to dominate her spirit or fail, and the darkness of his evil does not seem as interesting to us as her light.

"For Hemingway, landing her new role required a trace of obsession."