No cane, no gain: Donny Osmond makes a cheeky return to Flamingo

By John Katsilometes

Thursday, Sept. 5, 2013 | 2 a.m.

Donny Osmond walked out onstage Tuesday night … kind of.

Osmond had a bit of a hitch in his giddy-up, performing for the first time in two months to the day after aggravating an old injury positioned in his posterior.

“He’s oooooold,” Osmond’s sister, Marie, called out when Osmond reached the bottom of the stage’s staircase at the start of the show.

“That’s a bummer,” she added.

“Are you turning the other cheek,” he fired back.

Such was the banter between the famed siblings and the Flamingo’s star attractions. Donny Osmond was injured the night of July 3 while performing a fairly routine dance move and ruptured the tendon in his right gluteus maximus.

He originally tore the tendon about four years ago during “Dancing With the Stars” while sliding across the floor and beneath partner Kym Johnson. The dance was the samba; the song, a cover of the Osmonds’ hit “One Bad Apple.” The injury happened at the end of the routine.

As Osmond’s photos of his surgery definitively (and somewhat sickeningly) showed, the tendon split and severed from the femur.

“Isn’t that something?” Osmond said with a childlike grin while flipping through the pics on his smartphone. “You can see the tear right there!”

Osmond performed with an assortment of canes (my count was six, but he says five), including one fashioned with a mirrored disco ball to reflect the “DWTS” trophy he won in Season 9 in 2009.

“It’s still in the lobby. Have you seen it?” Osmond asked. “It’s in glass, protected, so Marie won’t steal it.”

Another of Osmond’s walking sticks was wrapped in red, white and blue ribbon. This was for his medley of Broadway show tunes. One was black, another purple.

A bedazzled desk chair also was put to good use, as Donny plopped down and sang “I’m Comin’ Out” as backing dancers dragged and spun him around the stage. It was sort of a “Jubilee!”-meets-Office Depot vibe.

Marie Osmond picked up the Flamingo dates Donny missed after he underwent surgery and began his rest-and-rehab stint. She performed first in Las Vegas with Osmond brother Merrill, then appeared at Caesars Atlantic City with her longtime friend and co-founder in the Children’s Miracle Network, former “The Dukes of Hazzard” star John Schneider.

Donny is scheduled to be in cane-and-able mode for about two more months, or until he’s 80 percent recovered from the injury. Then, it’s a Donny DanceFest at Flamingo.

Meantime, the vocal rest served Donny well, and he sounds great.

“The rest actually helped my voice,” he said. “It wasn’t all bad.”

Nope. And he gets to keep the canes.

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at Twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow “Kats With the Dish” at Twitter.com/KatsWiththeDish.