What Do Dennis Quaid, Michael Dorn, Hugh Hefner, and Bobby Allison Have in Common?

Discovery Wings Channel will soon offer audiences a look into the private passion of four renowned figures in movies, publishing, race-car driving and television, with the launch of Celebrity Wings on June 30, 2003.

In the four-part series, actor Dennis Quaid, Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, racing champion Bobby Allison, and Star Trek star Michael Dorn will share the dreams that first put them in the pilot's seat, and take viewers on exclusive rides in their private planes. These four diverse personalities share a common love for the open skies, and the release that flying offers from the pressures of work, hardship and fame.

"Celebrity Wings takes viewers behind the scenes and into the private world of celebrity pilots," says David Karp, senior vice president and general manager of Discovery Wings Channel. "These men have achieved great success in their respective fields, but when they climb into their planes, they feel the same childlike wonder familiar to all who take to the skies. Discovery Wings Channel understands and celebrates that enthusiasm, which has helped make the network the destination for aviation programming."

See the shows again in July -- Monday nights:

Celebrity Wings, hosted by Brianne Leary, will launch on June 30 at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT, with four back-to-back half-hour episodes. The episodes will have encore presentations on consecutive Mondays in July at 9:30 p.m. ET/PT.

Bobby Allison

According to three-time Daytona 500 winner and Winston Cup champion Bobby Allison, "Flying was always a perfect way to unwind after a hard race." Flying has also proved a source of renewal and healing after devastating personal tragedies: the deaths of his two sons, one in a race-car crash and the other in a helicopter accident, as well as his own near-fatal crash at the Pocono Raceway in 1988.

"Early in my recovery I would drive down to my hangar at Bessemer Airport, and I'd sit there, sometimes for an hour, just sitting there by the airplane," says Allison. "That would give me a little bit of enthusiasm to go ahead and face up to the rest of the day."

During the episode, Allison will fly Leary -- and viewers -- over his home state of Alabama in a 1967 Mooney Executive.

The Bobby Allison show will air on June 30 at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT, and again on Monday, July 7 at 9:30 p.m. ET/PT.

Hugh Hefner

Hugh Hefner is legendary for many things: for launching the Playboy empire, for his seemingly unending bevy of buxom blondes, for his silk pajamas and the sybaritic life at the Playboy Mansion. He's less well-known for the exploits of his younger years in the late 1940s -- when he was a stunt pilot performing stalls, loops and Immelmanns in an open-cockpit biplane. The experience gave him a love for planes and flight that accompanied him into his high-flying life at the head of the Playboy enterprise.

In Celebrity Wings: Hugh Hefner, viewers learn about Hef's beloved custom-designed plane, the "Big Bunny" -- a McDonnell-Douglas DC-9 reconfigured with private soundproof cabins, shower, and pull-down CinemaScope movie screen-painted solid black with an illuminated Playboy bunny on the tail. The eye-catching plane carried Hef and his entourage from 1969 to 1975. Today, Hefner travels in luxurious comfort - - with someone else at the controls -- in a Gulfstream II.

The Hefner special will air on June 30 at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT, and again on Monday, July 21 at 9:30 p.m. ET/PT.

Michael Dorn

Michael Dorn is used to leaving Earth behind -- for the past 15 years he's been known as Lieutenant Worf on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. But Dorn also heads skyward in his private life as often as he can, flying his 1974 Sabre Liner Jet and other former and current military jets at speeds as high as Mach One.

"Speed is life," says Dorn, quoting a military aphorism suggesting that the faster you fly, the safer you are. And flying is where Dorn feels safest and best: "It's like meditation," he says. Dorn takes Brianne Leary on a swift 600-mile tour of the mountains and deserts of Southern California -- an extraterrestrial experience unlike any other.

The Michael Dorn profile will air on June 30 at 9:30 p.m. ET/PT, and again on Monday, July 28 at 9:30 p.m. ET/PT.

Dennis Quaid

Actor Dennis Quaid is renowned for playing such diverse characters as the closeted gay husband of Julianne Moore in Far From Heaven, the drug lord's unscrupulous attorney in Traffic and the firefighter speaking to his son across two decades in Frequency. But these days, one of Quaid's favorite roles is that of pilot of his Cessna Citation One, which carries Quaid and Celebrity Wings host Brianne Leary to his spread in Bozeman (MT).

It was while playing astronaut Gordon "Gordo" Cooper in The Right Stuff that Quaid was first introduced to the joys of flying. Now, says Quaid, flying offers him the perfect relief from the pressures of the movie business. "Flying forces you to focus and forget about everything else," he notes. "It's like a magic carpet ride."

Quaid's special will air on June 30 at 8:30 p.m. ET/PT, and again on Monday, July 14 at 9:30 p.m. ET/PT.

FMI: www.discovery.com