Don't touch that dial. You could burn yourself. TV is hotter this year---there's something new between Johnny's golf swing and Arsenio's buzz cut: Fly by Night, planned for Tuesdays on CBS. Sally Monroe runs a charter airline, buzzes treetops, ducks creditors, nearly loses her shirt each week, contrives to survive and fly again. She's played by Shannon Tweed. You know Shannon (blonde, above). She has starred in 13 movies and five TV series since reigning as Playmate of the Year in 1982. Now meet sister Tracy, who co-stars in a Fly by Night episode. They're tall and talented.
Asked how she differs from big sis, Tracy grins slyly. "She's older." Big Bird is, indeed, no ingénue---not with starring roles in Falcon Crest and HBO's 1st & Ten on her résumé---but she's just 34. "I started early," Shannon says with a wink. She now has a toddler of her own, Nicholas, whose dad is actor/musician Gene Simmons of heavy-metal Kiss fame ("Yes, Gene's tongue is as long as they say"). Of Tracy, who at 26 has already been a world-class (text concluded on page 162)Boss Iweeds(continued from page 152) fashion model and who now co-hosts cable's magazine show Playboy 360, she says. "Tracy's beautiful, smart and she can act. Fly by Night was nerve-racking for her, but she did a great job." Junior Bird is a good bet to land more screen roles soon, but for now. Tracy's busy with Playboy 360. As she says, "It's spontaneous. It's fun"---like its co-host, a talk-show natural. As a tot transplanted to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Tracy accosted salesmen in local shoe stores, pretending to be a TV reporter: "Is this what you want to do with your life?" That irreverence now keeps 360 spinning. Tracy, a health-food fan, has taken the show to the streets and challenged junk-food munchers to defend their cuisine. Now she wants viewers to fax photos of their anatomies to the show. "We're putting together a fax of the perfect couple. So send Tracy your body parts. America!"
"She's a free spirit." Shannon says with approval. Nodding, Junior Bird adds that she had a good role model. "She's a great sister." Tracy shares Shannon's Tweedle-ized L.A. home with Gene and Nicholas, who can't wrap his two-year-old lips around the word Auntie and calls Tracy Eddie. "I may change my name to Eddie," she says.
Eleven feet, ten inches of smooth Canadian composure, the Tweeds are never inconspicuous. Shannon was first to learn that a tall beauty can intimidate men as well as attract them. Her regal bearing says simply, "I am what I am." It has helped her become a star---the kind who presents Emmy awards, as she did last year. Still, she and her even taller sister often deflect the size factor with humor. "I want to have children with a tall man," says Tracy. "Shannon and I will make our own tribe. Our kids' kids will be eight feet tall, and we'll shrink and be tiny grandmas."
This pictorial, a closer look at the Tweeds than you'll ever see on TV, was equal parts sexhibition and gabfest. Two of the world's best-looking women posed nude for Playboy's Richard Fegley. Sultry scenes. But as the hours passed, what Fegley saw through his lens was a couple of girls goofing off at a slumber party. "We felt like kids again," Shannon recalls.
"Right," says Tracy. "Shannon's gorgeous, and I love her a lot, but she's still Big Bird to me."
