Dancing with the Pornographers

By Mary Rose Rybak
Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Last week, the ABC television show Dancing With the Stars aired its season premiere, bringing professional dancers and celebrities together and seeing what happens when they put on their dancing shoes. Over twenty-two million viewers tuned in to meet the latest match-ups—in past seasons, the celebrities have ranged from political pundits to Super Bowl champions—take to the dance floor.

Every once in a while a celebrity, struggling with the new and rigorous dance choreography, suffers an injury and can’t continue with the show. This season, that is exactly what happened—twice. The singer Jewel and television host Nancy O’Dell both had to step out of the lineup just days before the premiere, sending the network on an urgent search for replacements.

ABC struck gold with one of its last-minute replacements: Melissa Rycroft, a recent star from the reality-television show The Bachelor, whose training in ballet became evident in her debut last night. But the producers’ other replacement makes obvious the desperation to find anyone to fill the spot: They chose Playboy playmate Holly Madison, one of the many former girlfriends of Hugh Hefner who most recently headlined Girls Next Door, a show about living in the Playboy Mansion. the rest