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Dustin Hoffman Used ‘Death of a Salesman’ to Grope Everyone

Keep your weekend rolling with even more sexual harassment news.

Kathryn Rossetter, who worked with Dustin Hoffman on Death of a Salesman, claims the actor sexually harassed and groped her during the play.

In case you missed it amongst the other hundreds of sexual harassment cases, a few week ago, Anna Graham Hunter wrote a letter detailing her time on the set of Death of a Salesman. In that letter, she talked about Hoffman’s predatory ways including a line about her “soft-boiled clitoris.”

Rossetter shares similar tales in her own letter.

She begins by saying that Hoffman helped her land the role in broadway play by caking her with makeup and stuffing her with towels to make her look older and fatter. She is very complimentary towards Hoffman, who probably didn’t want an actual old and fat chick as his co-star.

When Hoffman invited her to his hotel room and asked for a back rub, she thought that was all method acting. She was his mistress in the movie. And Hoffman, a married man, was simply getting them into character. Sadly, I have no doubts that this is a thing. Or, was a thing, until all these exposers ruined it for the true method actors of our time.

One night in Chicago, I felt his hand up under my slip on the inside of my thighs. I was completely surprised and tried to bat him away while watching the stage for my cues.

It then happened almost every show. Six to eight shows a week.

He kept it up and got more and more aggressive. One night he actually started to stick his fingers inside me. Night after night I went home and cried.

Rossetter continues:

The groping continued. After the shows at parties, whenever he had a picture taken with me, he would put his arm around my rib cage and then grab my breast just before they snapped the picture and then remove it. He was very skilled at dropping his hand just as the picture snapped to avoid it being recorded. But it was pre-digital. You didn’t know what was there until they were developed. Only by luck do I have one such picture — where the camera caught him in the act. A picture I had taken with hopes of sending it to my family. A millisecond in time. There I am — big smile and my arm moving toward his with the intention to push it away. But caught as it is, it seems I’m complicit with the gesture. I was not. Not ever.

Things didn’t get any easier for Rossetter, who says Hoffman would demand foot rubs before shows. And he would always ask her to “go higher” during these rubs. He wanted ball rubs, people. Stick with me.

Dustin started his grope. I started my batting him away and laughing on cue. Suddenly he grabs the bottom of my slip and pulls it up over my head, exposing my breasts and body to the crew and covering my face. I missed one of my laugh cues. Dustin had spread the word to the crew to come backstage at that time for a surprise. What a jokester. Mr. Fun. It was sickening.

When Rossetter confronted Hoffman in anger, he left her alone. For three days. When she tried to extract a little revenge, grabbing his crotch after he grabbed her breast, she was shamed.

People on the play deny Rossetter’s claims.

If the salesman wasn’t dead before, he is now. Because no one will watch that movie/play in light of these accusations.

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Perry de Havilland
6 years ago

“Because no one will watch that movie/play in light of these accusations.”

Sure, because ‘no one’ is disinclined to beieve every single uncorriborated denuncation that gets the accusers name mentioned?