The Killing of the Unicorn
book by Peter Bogdanovich
The Killing of the Unicorn: Dorothy Stratten 1960–1980 is a book by Peter Bogdanovich detailing the relationship between Bogdanovich and Dorothy Stratten, the making of They All Laughed and Stratten's murder. There is also criticism of Hugh Hefner and Playboy and its treatment of women.
Bogdanovich says he wrote the book "for himself. I wanted to understand what happened to her. I felt I couldn't move forward with my life, creative or otherwise until I did. I also wanted other young women, including my teenage daughters, to know about this web, this trap Dorothy had fallen into."
Bogdanovich says the book was meant to be delivered to William Morrow in August 1982 "but new facts kept coming to light and so it was delayed. I did more and more rewriting. In all, I suppose, I wrote the book five times."
While he was writing the book two films about the Stratten murder came out, Star 80 and Death of a Centerfold: The Dorothy Stratten Story.
Reception
A review in People magazine called the book:
[A] sometimes provocative but relentlessly self-serving version of Stratten's life and death ... blames Hefner's hedonistic philosophy for Dorothy's death and just about all of society's ills except the size of the federal deficit ...
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Killing of the Unicorn” is book by Peter Bogdanovich. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Killing, Unicorn and book, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “book by Peter Bogdanovich” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17112064. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1960, 1980 and 1982.
Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
- Identifying works and editions
- Tracing reception history
- Finding collection records
The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “The Killing of the Unicorn”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow The Killing of the Unicorn primary sources, The Killing of the Unicorn archive and Killing research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Killing of the Unicorn”?
- Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
- Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “The Killing of the Unicorn” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.