Forgotten Star Dorothy Stratten Almost Lived the Hollywood Fairy Tale. It Ended as a Horror Story.
So, to repeat: Nobody in his right mind would call Bogdanovich a pimp. Except, also to repeat: He made movies. Was, in fact, a director of movies, and inherent in that word—director—is power, authority, control. When a director cast his female lead, wasn’t he choosing a woman he believed conformed or could be coaxed into conforming to his dream? That was the dynamic between Bogdanovich and Shepherd—Pygmalion and Galatea. David Newman recalled going to visit Bogdanovich, encountering Shepherd: “She came out of the bedroom, sat on Peter’s lap. Peter goes, ‘Hi, honey,’ nuzzling, [as] I sat there…. She said, ‘I’m going off to UCLA to see—’ She opened the schedule. ‘…There’s an Allan Dwan at three o’clock, and at five-thirty, should I stay and see that Frank Borzage?’… He’d go out of the room, and she’d roll her eyes, and go, ‘He just wants me to know everything about the movies.’… She was being tutored to be a Peter Bogdanovich girlfriend.” When Bogdanovich got together with Dorothy in early 1980, he’d hit the skids. There’d …
