Las Vegas Weekly

March 24, 2009 · 7:52 PM

DWTS eliminates a Las Vegas favorite; Julianne, Steve-O and Holly are safe

By Robin Leach

The Dancing With the Stars contestants after performance night March 23, 2009.

Photo: ABC TV

Don’t read any further if you plan on watching the tape-delayed West Coast broadcast of ABC’s Dancing With the Stars and want nothing spoiled beforehand! But come back after the show to compare notes!

In the end, it wasn’t the men with the lowest scores who faced the Dancing With the Stars elimination.

Judges Carrie Ann Inaba, Bruno Tonioli and Len Goodman were cruel last night and put Steve-O and Steve Wozniak on the firing line with the lowest scores of the show. But viewers rallied to the two injured men and saved them from elimination this evening after President Barack Obama’s press conference!

Despite their injuries, both will be back next week for the Argentine tango or the lindy hop. Also safe were Julianne Hough and country singer boyfriend Chuck Wicks and The Bachelor’s Melissa Rycroft and pro partner Tony Dovolani.

Instead, in a shocking vote, viewers decided that Denise Richards and her Le Reve partner Maksim Chmerkovskiy should be one of the two duos to face the axe. And for Holly Madison, it became the moment she had dreaded. Click HERE for our exclusive interview with her and partner Dmitry Chaplin while they were rehearsing here in Las Vegas over the weekend.

In the story, Holly said, “Last week, I escaped the crucial first exit. It was scary because it wasn’t until the last minute they told us we were safe. I was really scared. Every week now, the bottom two will compete in the dance-off. No pressure there! My heart was pounding. That elimination is brutal. I never want to do the dance-offs!”

All day today, Holly and Dmitry rehearsed in case of the inevitable, and the judges noted the improvement and gave them 18 points out of 30. In the nail-biting final seconds, it was left to Denise and Maks -- and, amazingly there was such a dramatic improvement, they scored 20 out of 30.

Vegas DeLuxe will have the full report from the dance floor tomorrow morning with a larger explanation of the competition, the voting and the final result -- but for our Strip nightclub regular and film and reality TV star Denise, it was, shockingly, the end of the line!

Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past decade giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premier platinum playground.

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