Kiss and Tell (9 page)

One of the girls used to lead an aerobics class every afternoon, and Tracy and I would be in there, impossibly hungover, trying to work out. It was crazy; we were both young and naturally thin and didn’t really need the exercise, but this was the beginning of the Jane Fonda craze, and we thought it was something we should probably do. We had leg warmers and camel-toe bodysuits, as we called them, because they went so far up the crotch. Life in the Mansion could be like a big slumber party, hanging out with the girls coloring our hair, experimenting with clothes and makeup, getting massages, and pretending to work out.

Some days we’d go out shopping or to visit some friends. It was such a leisurely life that it was a shock to my system. I’d always had jobs since I left school; I was accustomed to being on my own and working hard. Now I had a new car, a place to live, money, free time, and no demands or financial stress. If I wanted to go shopping, Hef would hand over some cash and say, “Have fun.” He was a real sugar daddy, in the best sense of the word. Tracy and I had nothing to do but whatever we wanted. Shopping, parties, fun… I was like a kid in a candy store.

I was anxious to drive the Porsche 928 that I had won as Playmate of the Year. I convinced Hef to come out for a ride with me once, and completely panicked his security team. They were running around with their walkie-talkies saying, “He’s off the property! He’s off the property!” They came chasing after us as I was driving a hundred miles an hour up Sunset Boulevard. At the time I took him for that wild ride, I imagine Hef hadn’t driven himself in years.

We started to prepare for our nightlife at around 5:00 or 6:00 P.M. This was the part I didn’t like: acting as hostess to all the people who came to the Mansion. I felt that some of the regulars were abusing Hef’s generosity—coming only for the free buffet dinners, movies, and entertainment. Many were longtime friends of his, and I was expected to be nice to them. Their motives didn’t bother Hef, because at that point in his life he never wanted to go out or leave the Mansion; he wanted the party to come to him.

Five or six times a year Hef threw huge, elaborate parties. Finding the proper outfit or costume to wear could take weeks. I had my own dressing area in the suite, and half of the huge bathroom, which was bigger than many small houses. For a lingerie party once I had special silk pajamas tailor-made to match his robe. It was all quite decadent.

They were crazy times. A very famous basketball star used to come to see a friend of mine, a beautiful girl who was dating Hef’s brother. We’d be hanging out in her bedroom and hear this deep voice coming down the hall: “Debra…Debra…” Then bang, bang, bang on the door—with his penis! We’d be inside cracking up; this icon was banging on the door with his boner. “This is for you, Debra,”
…thump, thump…
We’d be inside, screaming and laughing.

Sometimes we’d go to Chippendale’s, stuff money in the dancers’ G-strings, and then bring some of the boys home for a party. Tracy and I used to run around at night, racing through the halls like five-year-olds. Stars like John Belushi would be lounging in the pool with a cocaine bullet stuck in each nostril and beautiful girls all around, and the best-known father figure on TV was offering my teenage sister hash. You never knew what would be going on at any given moment.

Chapter Six

Breaking Up is Hard to Do

H
ugh Hefner was the first famous person I had ever dated. I started at the top and worked sideways, staying right at the top. The world of fame is a different fishbowl. It’s both bigger and smaller than you might expect. When you’re in the regular world and unknown, certain people are always watching you—the people who mean something to you, like your family and friends—and judging what you do. But when you’re dating a famous person, more people, including other well-known people, are all taking note, thinking things like,
Why did he pick her? What’s so great about her?

It’s a little bit like Hollywood High. It’s competitive in a way, but with really powerful, famous guys, you can’t compete for their affections. They like you or they don’t. They aren’t waiting around to see who does the best splits or cheers. Powerful men pretty much have their choice of women at all times, so they’re picking you based on chemistry. And other girls will hate you for it, even if you aren’t consciously trying to win over some man.

With Hef, right from the start I thought,
My God. This is a whole different animal. Where he’s been, what he’s seen, the things that he knows…
My previous boyfriend had been a CFL linebacker, and there wasn’t a whole lot of stimulating conversation going on in that relationship. Hef, on the other hand, was fun, intelligent, exciting, boyish, and manly, all at once. He was a whole new package.

It’s funny, but with my previous boyfriends the relationships had been much more about sex than those with any of the famous men I dated. Obviously sex is a huge part of any relationship, and it was certainly a big part of mine with Hef. But more important to him at that time was the exclusivity on my part. He is a man who needs a constant primary companion. (And he usually goes for clean-cut, nice girls. Sondra had been a Sunday-school teacher, for heaven’s sake.) Of course he had dalliances, but he needed to have one main squeeze. You see this frequently with famous, powerful men. They have the number one girlfriend and a side girlfriend so that if something goes wrong they shouldn’t have to, God forbid, go somewhere on their own or be alone for a night.

When the newness of my situation with Hef started to wear off, I started to wonder what else in the world I wanted to do. I had been living in the Mansion for a year, and as wonderful as life was, I had gotten somewhat jaded. The whole thing was getting a tiny bit old. It was no longer all I wanted to do. I started bucking the system a little, not showing up and skipping parties and gatherings. I needed to be by myself sometimes. My inherent work ethic reared its head, and I started saying that I wanted to get a job. I was acting out, because I wasn’t able to verbalize what I really wanted. I just knew that what I had was no longer it.

It’s not that I didn’t know what I had was great, because it was. I felt guilty for even complaining, but the bottom line was that this fabulous lifestyle just wasn’t real. It was a fantasy world, and I knew I couldn’t live in a fantasy forever.
How long am I going to be the one? How long do I want to do this? How much sex can you have?
As Bill Maher says, “No matter how beautiful a woman is, someone is sick of sleeping with her.” I really started bugging Hef about this stuff.

It seemed to me that maybe I could get a job. But, what did I want to do? I had no idea. Hef certainly didn’t want me to have a job that would take me away from him. To pacify me, he came up with a job for me at
Playboy on the Scene,
a show that ran on the Playboy Channel, which was then in its infancy. The channel wasn’t yet showing pornographic movies. It was trying to be mainstream while maintaining the
Playboy
brand—mainstream, but attractive to a late-night audience. It was an
Entertainment Tonight-type
format featuring adult world news—what strippers do in Russia and so on—from the Playboy point of view. Peter Tomarkin and I were the hosts of the show.

I was thrilled to have a job; it was challenging, especially since I was high all the time when going to work—not good. Someone from Lorimar Studios caught the show and thought I’d be good for a role on
Falcon Crest,
which was then a big nighttime soap on CBS. It was a very small part, but I’d only been in L.A for a year or so and here I was being considered for a role on a prime-time television series. Even if I didn’t have many lines, I was lucky. I auditioned and got the part. Believe me, they weren’t looking for acting talent. They needed some arm candy, some sexual decoration for the show, and publicized that I was Playmate of the Year and Hugh Hefner’s girlfriend. They were trying to boost their audience a little bit, but I don’t think I did as much for them as they did for me.

Hef was torn, and so was I. He was happy for me and wanted to be supportive, but he didn’t want me to leave. Wasn’t there any work I could do here, at home? I had been told to report to work on location in Napa Valley, a date which conflicted with the annual Midsummer Night’s Dream party. I said, “I have to go to work, I can’t go to the party. It’s my new job, I can’t stay and be the party hostess with you.” I was really chafing at this point. I felt irritated. This relationship was not working out the way I wanted. I was itching for more freedom, even though I knew that the more freedom I took, the faster Hef would replace me. Hugh Hefner is not a man who likes to be single, or alone.

“Look, I really want this job. I’m going to go for it,” I told him. But the annual Midsummer Night’s Dream party was a big, big deal—the same party where I’d originally met Hef just one year before. He was not about to appear without his girlfriend. When I asked, “How can I be at the party the night before and on the set in Napa Valley the next morning?” Hef replied, “I’ll fly you to work.” So the party raged all night, and as it was winding down I said, “It’s time to go to the airport.” My bags were packed and ready to go with me to Napa Valley. My sister, another girl, and I were still partying all the way to the airport. I was wearing, basically, a negligee with a robe over it. I hopped off that plane and went straight into hair and makeup. Talk about making a bad first impression. It doesn’t get any worse than that.

It was all over the set. She did what? She flew into work on a private plane? Does she even need this job? I didn’t, of course, but I wanted the experience. I’m sure they could see that I was high. I hadn’t even slept, and there I was getting my hair and makeup done. Chatting away about the party and who was there, on and on, not even stopping to consider that this was no one else’s reality. Everything I said sounded like a complete fabrication.

It didn’t even occur to me that this kind of chatter might not endear me to my fellow actors. That they might not really take to me after that. Why wouldn’t they like me, I never did anything to them? I just flew in to go to work! In retrospect, my God, I would hate me, too! But there I was and they had to deal with it. David Selby was very sweet and gracious to me; I’m sure he had seen quite a lot in his lifetime. Jane Wyman was there, and Susan Sullivan, who was great. Jane, the former Mrs. Ronald Reagan, couldn’t have cared less who I was or how I got there. I saw famous sweater girl Lana Turner, who never did say a word to me. After that inauspicious beginning I had to spend the next few months slowly trying to get into everyone’s good graces. I developed a huge crush on David Selby. I didn’t do anything about it because he was married, but oh my, he was so cute. There was my wandering eye again…could be a sign of things to come.

I had signed for 10 episodes of
Falcon Crest
and wound up doing 20. In those 20 episodes I probably spoke 20 words—total. E.G. Marshall played my boss. My character was a secretary who was also an insider sent in to sabotage and spy on everyone. It was just a soap, but a pretty popular one at the time. I really had no idea what I was doing, but David was very patient.

THE CAST OF FALCON CREST.

After they finished getting all the exteriors in Napa, the rest of the show was shot on the Warner Bros. lot in L.A. You see it all the time on movies and television—”the lot.” It was very exciting to go through the main gate and be greeted by the guard: “Good morning, Miss Tweed!” It was a thrill for me, but I felt a bit of regret, because while I was working, there were some humdingers of parties at my house that I couldn’t go to. I knew there were girls circling Hef, thinking,
She’s gone, this is my chance to move in.
The tension in the air was palpable. I could feel other girls nipping at my heels.

Hef could have said, “Come on home, and we’ll go on like we were. You don’t have to work.” I sensed that he wanted to say that, and I was very conflicted. In a way I was done with that life, and wanted to do everything on my own…but not really. What I really wanted was to be with him, my way, and that wasn’t going to happen.

I found an agent, John Larocca, who once represented Michelle Pfeiffer when she was starting out. He sent me around on some auditions, but it was a tough sell. I was six feet tall and known only as a Playmate. There just weren’t that many roles that were right for me, even though by now I was growing into and developing “my look” and actually starting to believe in myself. I realized that while I may not have had outstanding talent, I wasn’t a bad actress.

I was offered a movie role after my work on the series ended, for a picture starring Peter Weller that was shooting in Canada. I must admit that the Canadian content laws really helped me get that role. Many Canadian actors were coming to L.A. in the eighties to further their acting careers, only to be booked on gigs back home, because Canada offered rebates and tax incentives to use local talent.

Back at the Mansion there was great dissension in the ranks. I was on my way to Canada, hearing all this gossip about girls going in and out of Hef’s room, and I was pissed. It wasn’t the jealous, “I love him, how can he do this to me” kind of pissed. It was more the “Why can’t I have everything?” kind of pissed. But you just can’t have everything. I decided to get back at him by having an affair with Peter Weller, whom I met on the airplane flying to location to Montreal. We made out in the first class section for most of the trip. It was my first real “cheat” on Hef, since technically he and I were still living together. Peter was also my first taste of leading-man syndrome: falling in love with your leading man for a nanosecond. On the set, romances last for as long as the movie. When it’s over, you wind up asking yourself,
What did I see in him anyway? He was pretty good-looking on the set, because he was the big cheese.
Then once the picture wraps, you’re kind of done with him.

When we got back in town after the movie wrapped, Peter wanted to see the Mansion, so I invited him to one of the parties. I was still Hef’s official girlfriend, but since I had heard from the butlers that Hef had not been wasting his time either, I was a little mad at him. It wasn’t that I wanted him to ask my permission—we weren’t monogamous in the traditional sense—but I felt a little cheated on. I had heard from several people that a girlfriend of mine had been hitting on Hef from the moment I left. Payback’s a bitch! My friend, who would later become quite a famous TV personality, wanted to be in
Playboy
in the worst way; she used to cry on my shoulder about it all the time. (Even after her fling with Hef, she still didn’t get in. Ironically,
Playboy
wanted to put her in the magazine after she got famous, but by then she was done with them.) I realized it was time to move into my own apartment in L.A., so my sister and a girlfriend, Cindy, who was dating Hef’s son David, and I rented a place—one I never stayed in until we broke up, but it was there, ready. I was at the “just in case” stage, waiting for the inevitable.

The night Peter Weller showed up at the Mansion pretty much spelled the end of Hef’s and my relationship. Peter had a great time, but I was just not into the whole Mansion party scene anymore. I’d had a little taste of independence, and I wanted to see where it took me, but I still wanted everything; I was confused again. Twenty-five years old and at another major crossroad. By the end of the evening I’d made up my mind to meet Peter at his hotel later. We’d been spending every night together while shooting the movie. My sister, who had missed me while I was away, rode with me in the Porsche to our apartment. She was always up for some adventure, and now happily came along for the ride. She said, “Shannon, I think we’re being followed.” I laughed it off, but she said, “No, really. We’re being followed.”