Claudia Jennings was a stunning model and actress who rose to fame after appearing in Playboy magazine as the Playmate of the Month for November 1969 and the Playmate of the Year for 1970. She was also known as the “Queen of B movies” for her roles in exploitation films and television shows. However, her life and career were cut short when she died in a horrific car accident in 1979 at the age of 29. Here is the story of Claudia Jennings’ cause of death and how it shocked the entertainment industry.
Contents
Claudia Jennings’ Early Life and Career
Claudia Jennings was born Mary Eileen Chesterton on December 20, 1949, in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She later moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and then to Evanston, Illinois, where she graduated from high school in 1968. She joined a theater company in Chicago and worked as a receptionist at Playboy’s office. She posed for the magazine in 1969 under the name Claudia Jennings, which she adopted to avoid embarrassing her family. Her original pictorial was photographed by Pompeo Posar.
She was named Playmate of the Year in 1970 and received a pink Mercury Capri as a prize. She became one of the most popular and beloved Playmates of the 1970s and a close friend of Hugh Hefner, who considered himself as her father figure. She also pursued an acting career and appeared in films such as Jud (1971), The Unholy Rollers (1972), ‘Gator Bait (1973), The Great Texas Dynamite Chase (1976), and Deathsport (1978). She also had guest roles on TV shows such as Ironside, The Brady Bunch, Barnaby Jones, and Logan’s Run.
Claudia Jennings’ Personal Life and Relationships
Claudia Jennings married Paul Snider, a small-time promoter and pimp, in Las Vegas on June 1, 1979. Snider had discovered her at a Dairy Queen in Vancouver, Canada, and convinced her to pose for Playboy. He was very controlling and possessive of her and tried to manage her career and finances. He also allegedly forced her to sleep with other men to advance her career, including Hefner, who denied having a romantic relationship with her.
Jennings fell in love with director Peter Bogdanovich while filming They All Laughed (1981), which also starred Audrey Hepburn and Ben Gazzara. It was her first major film role and her big break. She left Snider for Bogdanovich in June 1980 and filed for divorce. Snider became obsessed with her and stalked her. He also bought a shotgun and told his friends that he would kill her if she did not come back to him.
Claudia Jennings’ Cause of Death
On October 3, 1979, Claudia Jennings was driving her Volkswagen convertible on the Pacific Coast Highway near Topanga, California. She was on her way to meet Bogdanovich for lunch. She was speeding and weaving through traffic when she crossed the center divider and collided head-on with a pickup truck driven by Robert Kendig. Jennings died instantly from massive head injuries. Kendig survived with minor injuries.
The police found cocaine and marijuana in Jennings’ car and blood tests revealed that she had traces of both drugs in her system. They also found a letter from Snider in her purse, begging her to reconcile with him. Snider was devastated by the news of her death and blamed himself for it. He also blamed Bogdanovich for stealing his wife and ruining his life.
On August 14, 1980, Snider lured Jennings’ estranged husband to his West Los Angeles apartment by telling him that he had some personal belongings of hers that he wanted to give him. He then raped him, shot him with the same shotgun that he had bought months earlier, and then killed himself. The bodies were found by Snider’s private investigator, who had been hired by Hefner to keep an eye on him.
Claudia Jennings’ Legacy
Claudia Jennings’ death shocked the entertainment industry and the public. She was mourned by her fans, friends, family, and colleagues. Hefner said that she was “one of our family” and that he felt “a very special responsibility” for her. Bogdanovich said that she was “the love of my life” and that he was “devastated” by her loss. He later wrote a book about their relationship called The Killing of the Unicorn: Dorothy Stratten (1960-1980), which was published in 1984.
Jennings was featured in a 2000 episode of E! True Hollywood Story, which interviewed several people who knew her. Her story was also dramatized in two films: Death of a Centerfold: The Dorothy Stratten Story (1981), starring Jamie Lee Curtis as Jennings and Bruce Weitz as Snider, and Star 80 (1983), starring Mariel Hemingway as Jennings and Eric Roberts as Snider.
Claudia Jennings remains one of the most iconic and tragic figures in Playboy history. She was a beautiful, talented, and ambitious woman who had a bright future ahead of her, but who also had a dark and troubled past that haunted her. She was a victim of a violent and jealous man who could not let her go. She was a star who burned too bright and too fast.
