(Reporting and writing by Alex Dobuzinskis)

The judges on ABC’s “Dancing With The Stars” won’t have Cloris Leachman to kick around anymore. The grand dame of the show was shown the exit door on Tuesday night, but she was slow to leave.
 
The Oscar-winning actress and her dancing partner, Corky Ballas, were voted off a day after the judges gave them a rock-bottom score of 15. Leachman, 82, managed to stay in the competition beyond the season’s halfway point with a loyal base of fans, despite scoring at the low end of the judge’s rankings most weeks.

She always played up the humor of her being in the competition when she is way past retirement age, and Tuesday’s show was no exception. First Leachman said she was not leaving, even before the show’s hosts had announced her elimination. Moments later when she was kicked off, the crowd gave her a standing ovation. 
 
In the middle of it all, after thanking the judges, Leachman decided she needed a rest. So she sat down on the dance floor. Ballas and the show’s hosts followed suit.
 
“I’m going to get a pretty costume and be here next week,” Leachman said. “I’m going to sit right over there.” So, viewers of “Dancing With The Stars” and her fans can expect to see more of Leachman, — just not on the ballroom floor.
 
In the meantime, viewers will not see professional dancer Julianne Hough for at least a couple weeks. The partner to “Hannah Montana” star Cody Linley, 18, announced on Monday that she was diagnosed with endometriosis, a condition in which tissue normally found in the lining of the uterus grows in other parts of the body. 
 
On Tuesday’s show, Linley told viewers that Hough underwent surgery to remove her appendix and the procedure went well. 
 
On her Web blog at Fancast.com, Hough on Tuesday also shed more light on her condition, which among other things involves complications from cysts. She wrote that she ruptured a cyst that was on her ovary, which required a widely reported trip to the hospital last week and led to her diagnosis.
 
Hough wrote that doctors wanted to “clean out the cysts” and remove her appendix also, “because later on it can be affected by the cysts.”
 
Hough said she expects to resume dancing with Linley in two weeks. In the meantime, Linley is partnered with dancing pro Edyta Sliwinska. And, as they say in Hollywood, the show goes on.

We’ve seen it before on ”Dancing with the Stars.” Sometimes, it doesn’t matter how well you move across the ballroom floor or how much the judges admire your footwork, if fans don’t love you, you lose your dancing shoes (remember Cheetah Girl Sabrina Bryan in season No. 5?). Then again, if you have a sort of older, folksy appeal, voters seem to love it (Jerry Springer in season 3).

The latest example is Tuesday’s axing of singer Toni Braxton, even though she scored a point better than the bottom-rung contestants with 22 out of 30 points from judges. Below her at 21 was Lance Bass, who fell during his routine on Monday night. Even more shocking, perhaps, is that 82-year-old Cloris Leachman and her partner, Corky  Ballas, dubbed “Clorky,” managed to stay on the show, too, while scoring below Braxton.

It’s not that Cloris can’t dance. She has proven in the past two weeks that she can glide, shake, twist and turn on the dance floor, albeit a bit more slowly than the others. And even Braxton admitted she could have done better.

But really, who was the better dancer?

Still, Grammy-winning singer Braxton had no hard feelings. Braxton recently stopped performing after being diagnosed with microvascular angina, which involves poor functioning of blood vessels nourishing the heart and can cause breathing problems. 

Tuesday, she said one of ther goals in appearing on DWTS was to improve her breathing so she could return to performing. “My goal was reached, I wanted to do better, I wanted to breathe better and I definitely was breathing better. I’ve come a long way from week one to week now,” Braxton said, adding that her “heart is much better.”
    
Show co-host Tom Bergeron asked Braxton if that meant she was ready to stage a comeback with a show in Las Vegas, where she has performed in recent years.
    
“I still have to build up on performing for an hour-and-a-half, so this is good, this has been really good for me,” she said.
    
Health concerns became a theme for Tuesday’s show, because dancer Julianne Hough, the partner to “Hannah Montana” star Cody Linley, was rushed to a hospital with a stomach ache.
    
Hough wrote about it on Wednesday on her blog at the Fancast.com Web site. 

    
“I was with my mom when I checked into the hospital,” Hough wrote. “The minute I got there TMZ, ET and other (news) outlets were waiting outside. I was like oh my goodness. It was amazing how fast news can travel.”
    
Hough wrote that before she left the hospital she asked the doctor for “a note to sleep in” so she could get out of a group dance rehearsal.
    
Elsewhere, the show’s hosts announced that because of scheduling problems, judge Len Goodman will be out for the next two weeks, so Lord of the Dance star Michael Flatley will fill in for Goodman. We wonder whether he, like viewers, will be also be won over by the comedy of “Clorky,” more than their dancing. 

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis)

ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars” hit its midway point on Monday, and  it seems no better time than now to write about it. The star of this year hasn’t been the dancing so much as the comedy provided by 82-year-old Cloris Leachman, who continues to hang on in the ballroom competition. And again on Monday night,  Leachman gave the show what was perhaps its most entertaining moment. 

When co-host Samantha Harris interviewed Leachman and and partner Corky Ballas backstage after they danced a salsa, she asked Leachman what kind of character she had tried to portray in her routine. Leachman said Ballas wanted her to play “A something ho.” She struggled to remember exactly what Ballas wanted until, finally and proudly, blurting out “A skanky ho.”

As for the actual dancing, there was plenty for the judges to gush about in an evening that featured celebrity competitors showing off their best West Coast swing, hustle, jitterbug and salsa steps. Brooke Burke and professional dance partner Derek Hough got a top score of 29 our of 30 for their jitterbug performance and were followed closely by fellow jitterbuggers Cody Linley and his dance partner, Julianne Hough with 28.  
 
It was a night for the athletes, as the judges praised former Olympic sprinter Maurice Greene and his partner Cheryl Burke, and former pro football player Warren Sapp and his partner Kym Johnson.
 
And if there was a DWTS version of the Purple Heart, it would go to daytime TV star Susan Lucci, who hit the dance floor soon after visiting the hospital and being diagnosed with a fractured bone in her foot. “I didn’t see any ounce of pain in your body and I love it, you just went through it like a trooper,” said judge Carrie Ann Inaba. 
 
The next elimination will happen on Tuesday’s show, but if you want to get in your favorite pick now. Here’s your chance. Tell us who should go.

(Writing by Alex Dobuzinskis)

(Photos: copyright 2008 ABC Inc., Kelsey McNeal)