Free Preview: Playmates of the Month October 1970 - Madeleine and Mary Collinson

Identical twins have been a perennial theme of folklore and literature since Romulus and Remus shrewdly picked up some real estate in what turned out to be Rome. After a look at our October Playmates - 18-year-old Mary and Madeleine Collinson - it's easy to understand why Shakespeare, Thornton Wilder and Lewis Carroll, to name a few, felt compelled to express their fascination for this unusual sibling relationship. Although these brown-eyed beauties agree that being look-alikes is great fun, their biological uniqueness can be a problem. "Sometimes people treat us differently from other kids just because we're twins," says Madeleine. In an uncannily similar voice, Mary concurs: "They think we're special, but we don't like the distinction. This is one of the reasons we left home." Home for the Collinson girls - the second pair of twins in their family - is Malta, the tiny formerly British island in the Mediterranean whose inhabitants speak an exotic blend of Arabic and Italian dialects. Over a year and a half ago - when they both decided that life there was too orthodox and insular - the pair migrated to London to embark on a career in fashion modeling. "At first it was a difficult adjustment," recalls Mary, "since we had no close friends or relatives to help us. We didn't know how to manage a career and we had to learn the hard way. Some people tried to take advantage of us because of our inexperience and often promised us jobs we never got." Happily, things have changed for t...