Dancing Stars: Favorites?
Matt Robinson
As Dancing with the Stars heats up, which tandems are best positions to take home the title?
Brooke and Derek are the ones to beatNot so fast, Brooke Burke and Derek Hough. While this tandem is the favorite on season seven of Dancing with the Stars, a quartet of other couples will have something to say about the champion.
Can Brooke Burke and Derek Hough go wire-to-wire this season on Dancing with the Stars?
This tandem has led the way every week of the competition, but past seasons have taught fans to see the series as a marathon, not a sprint.
With that in mind, here are the five couples, ranked in order, that we think have the best chance of taking home season seven's trophy:
1. Brooke Burke and Derek Hough: They haven't had an off-week yet. Even backstage fighting has resulted in on-camera chemistry.
2. Warren Sapp and Kym Johnson: The only thing bigger than Sapp? The ever-growing fan base for this former NFL All-Pro.
3. Cody Linley and Julianne Hough: Slowly pacing themselves, these young, attractive stars will benefit a legion of loyal fans.
4. Lance Bass and Lacey Schwimmer: Would be ranked higher, purely based on talent. But Bass loses points for possessing an extensive background in dancing.
5. Maurice Greene and Cheryl Burke: She's won the competition twice and his personality is coming out more every week.
High-Kicking Her Way to a Renaissance at 82
By EDWARD WYATT
Published: October 19, 2008
LOS ANGELES — Roughly an hour after performing a tango that would earn her another week on “Dancing With the Stars” last Monday, Cloris Leachman took a moment to look ahead to where her career, still-blossoming at 82, might go once her time on the ABC hit dance competition runs its course.
Cloris Leachman rehearses with her “Dancing With the Stars” partner, Corky Ballas. The pair has survived four eliminations.
“I could get pregnant,” she said in an interview in her trailer, where, completely coincidentally, she insisted on changing out of her ballroom gown in front of a reporter. “I’ve got a bit of time before my next project. Maybe I’ll be on ‘American Idol.’ ”
Whatever her next undertaking, it is clear that Ms. Leachman is not on the way out. Soon after finishing on “Dancing,” she is scheduled to belatedly join Quentin Tarantino on the set of his new film, “Inglorious Bastards,” which stars Brad Pitt and is shooting in Berlin. She has postponed a national tour of her new one-woman show, “Cloris,” to accommodate the dancing gig. And on New Year’s Day she will serve as grand marshal of the Rose Parade, an event that thrills her grandchildren, she says, because it “is actually older than I am.”
With all of those opportunities, it is perhaps perplexing that Ms. Leachman would commit to a reality-television program whose definition of “star” can be loose and often includes performers whose careers badly need a boost. It rarely extends to someone with an Oscar, a bookcase full of Emmys and defining roles in some of the most classic entertainments — “The Last Picture Show,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “Young Frankenstein,” to name three — of the last 50 years.
Despite those credentials, Ms. Leachman had to beg to be on “Dancing With the Stars.”
“My son became my manager, and he said to me, ‘Mom, if you could do anything you wanted to do, what would it be?’ ” Ms. Leachman recalled. “And out of my mouth immediately came ‘Dancing With the Stars.’ I hadn’t been watching it all these years; I passed it by once and watched part of it and I just loved it.”
Nevertheless, she said, she was turned down by the producers — not once, but twice. “This was the third time,” she said. “They turned me down twice because I was too old.” ABC confirmed that it passed over Ms. Leachman but not, the network said, because of her age.
Ms. Leachman is perhaps having the last laugh, having survived the first four weeks of eliminations to become the surprise of the season. She might be the first 82-year-old to hike her foot above her head on network television — even if it took a little help from her professional ballroom partner, Corky Ballas.
That move did not come easily. “I think my back’s sore down low,” she said as she changed clothes, having first wrested a guarantee from a reporter — willfully given — to keep his eyes closed.
“I hurt my rib,” she continued. “I have pads in my shoes for my bunion. I have a shot in my knee for my bad knee. I have high blood pressure. Very bad osteoporosis. And asthma. But I’m talking pills for everything so everything is fine.”
Still, she is the “Dancing” star who, more than any of her competitors on the show, is hounded to sign autographs and pose for pictures with the largely middle-age, mostly female V.I.P.’s who are allowed backstage.
Younger fans of “Dancing” knew less about Ms. Leachman before the current season — beginning with her own dancing partner. When Mr. Ballas met Ms. Leachman, he asked if she had been on the television series “Bewitched.”
(No, she said, that was her former mother-in-law, Mabel Albertson, who played Darrin Stevens’s mother, Phyllis Stevens. Ms. Leachman graciously did not bother to relate that she was the first person on screen in the pilot episode of “Mary Tyler Moore.” Her portrayal of Phyllis Lindstrom won her two of her numerous Emmys and was later expanded into a spinoff, “Phyllis.”)
Ms. Leachman made a more recent impression on the younger generation when she turned in the funniest performance of all on Comedy Central’s roast of Bob Saget. Mr. Saget, who helped introduce the world to the Olsen twins on “Full House,” violated the sitcom and left it for dead in a ditch, Ms. Leachman proclaimed.
Mr. Saget, who as a teenager in the San Fernando Valley attended tapings of both “Mary Tyler Moore” and “Phyllis,” said that although Ms. Leachman was not a stand-up comic, “she knew to do what all good comics know, which is to just open the throttle all the way and don’t hold back from the moment you take the stage.”
Ms. Leachman professes to not know why she has such support among fans of “Dancing With the Stars,” although clearly her longevity in show business has benefited her over someone like, say, Kim Kardashian, the reality-television and sex-tape star who was voted off three weeks ago.
Throughout her career, she explained, “if I were to do some outlandish role, I always made sure I’d be on Johnny Carson to show that I wasn’t that person that I played. I’d be myself. And so people got to know me, I think, and I think they know that I’m honest and truthful and real.
“I am from Des Moines, Iowa, not even the city but out in the country,” she added. “I don’t have a lot of trappings, I think, in my personality. I’m just a simple person, with a silly bone.”
In a town where most actresses would no sooner admit their age than turn down a chance to walk the red carpet, Ms. Leachman posts her date of birth — April 30, 1926 — on her Web site, cloris.com.
Certainly she is an anomaly at a time when, given the ravages of high-definition television, many female stars will not go before a camera without being injected or lifted or receiving some implant.
Still, the ravages of a late-blooming ballroom-dance career are beginning to show. She looks tired, perhaps a sign that the two and a half to three hours a day of dance rehearsal — half the time some competitors put in — is wearing on her. In addition, there are the endless publicity demands, including an hour or more giving interviews, like the current one, after both the performance and results episodes of “Dancing With the Stars” each week.
Even after all these years in show business, Ms. Leachman said, there are still some things people do not know about her. She is not inclined to reveal them just yet.
“They’re in my book,” she promised, which is to be published by Kensington Books. “It’s coming out in the spring. You’ll find out a few things about me.”
Strictly judge Len Goodman 'to quit' show but Bruce Forsyth says he'll stay on
By Paul Revoir
Strictly Come Dancing's Len Goodman has hinted that he could quit the BBC programme - so he can carry on presenting the US version of the show.
The popular head judge is currently racking up thousands of air miles flying between London and Los Angeles each week to work on both shows.
But the 64-year-old has admitted jet lag is becoming a problem and he would drop the BBC version because he is better-paid on the American show.
He gets about £250,000 for taking part in the US series on ABC as compared with £90,000 for the UK show on BBC1.
Mr Goodman and fellow judge Bruno Tonioli fly to LA on Sunday morning to film Dancing with the Stars and return to London on Thursday each week.
They work two days on Strictly Come Dancing before flying off to LA.
'I wasn't going to do it this year - the flying backwards and forwards - but I got talked into it again,' said Goodman.
Lance Bass steps up on 'Dancing With the Stars'
By PATRICK HUGUENIN
Saturday, October 18th 2008, 4:00 AM
"I've had several friends do the show," he says, "and they're like, 'Listen, try to get in shape before you do it because it's going to hurt.' I got a trainer and got in pretty much the best shape of my life."
The one-time 'N Sync boy-bander has worn many hats since the group split in 2002.
He trained as an astronaut, produced and starred in movies and hit the cover of People magazine, raising his eyebrows over a headline that blared, "I'm gay." A memoir followed.
He says "Dancing With the Stars" is his chance to focus, recharge and figure out how he's going to make it back to New York - a place he refers to as "definitely my favorite city ever" since his six months as Corny Collins in "Hairspray" on Broadway.
"This show is the first time in a while that I've had no personal life," he says. And after all the post-coming-out scrutiny and dating several tabloid-ready hunks, the now-single Bass says it's a welcome break.
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"I've had some amazing relationships and now is time to really focus on me and figure out what my next step's going to be."
In the short term, that step is going to be something along the lines of a pas de deux. Bass and "Dancing" partner Lacey Schwimmer (a former finalist on "So You Think You Can Dance") pulled down decent scores - until last week, when their moves rocketed them into favor with the judges.
"For some reason," he says, "we pleased all three judges! We have to study what we did and do it again."
Bass seems well on his way to living up to his preshow claim that he wants to take back the seventh season of "Dancing" for the entertainers in the contest (after recent seasons that were dominated by athletes such as Kristi Yamaguchi).
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"Those athletes," he says, "they're brutes. They're so competitive and they're so talented at anything they do. ... But really, the show's such a popularity contest. As technically perfect as you can get, America likes to vote on who they want to see because they enjoy seeing them."
Still, he gives credit to retired NFL player Warren Sapp: "For a guy who's 300 pounds, to be able to move his feet like that is incredible."
And after it's all over and he's free to travel and take on new projects, he says he'll be back in the dating pool. "I'm a hopeless romantic for sure," he says. "Hopefully, I'll meet the man of my dreams." |
