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I had never written the obituary of an old friend before. Not until October 3, when word came over the newswire at Daily Variety diat "A woman killed this morning in a traffic accident on Pacific Coast Highway in the Malibu area has been identified as a former Playboy magazine 'Playmate of the Month' and an actress in several motion pictures. Claudia Jennings, 29, was pronounced dead at the scene after her car reportedly drifted across the center divider into a head-on collision with an oncoming truck."
A few staffers were sitting around after deadline watching one of the baseball playoff games when the news arrived, so all I could do was quickly rewrite the account, elaborate upon her credits, and add a couple of personal touches. I couldn't say that I had acted with her in plays in high school, gone out with her then, and cast her as the lead in my first film. I couldn't add that I had watched her ascendancy - from the November 1969 Playmate to Playmate of the Year to one of the magazine's most perennially popular attractions - with something of the mixed feelings a brother might have; or that I had coedited a book called Kings of the Bs while she became known as "Queen of the Bs"; or that I had found myself working with her again nearly ten years after our first film collaboration, on a picture for Roger Corman.
What I wrote in Variety had to be strictly factual; I whipped it out quickly before the weirdness and grimness of it all could overtake me. Checks with the coroner proved unrewarding. No autopsy was performed, and her ashes were scattered at sea by The Neptune Society. One full-page ad was taken anonymously in Daily Variety bemoaning her passing, and speculation was rampant among those who knew her as to what might have caused her death. One acquaintance immediately thought of Billy Wilder's Fedora, guessing Claudia might have done it on purpose. After all, she had recently lost out for the job of Kate Jackson's replacement on Charlie's Angels after having been led to believe she might get the part. But she was too tough for that - too levelheaded to be plunged into...