The life of Anna Nicole Smith reads like a Jackie Collins novel, but unlike a Collins novel, where the good characters usually have a chance of living happily ever after, the last years of Smith’s life led not only to mystery and scandal, but to tragedy too.
Born Vickie Lynn Hogan on 28 November 1967, Anna Nicole Smith had a tumultuous relationship with her mother and for the most part was raised by her aunt in Mexia, Texas. By the time she was seventeen the young girl was married to Billy Wayne Smith, and gave birth to their son, Daniel Wayne, just nine months later on 22 January 1986. The marriage didn’t work out, however; Anna had ambitions to be famous and just a year after Daniel’s birth she packed her bags and moved to Houston in a bid to make her dreams come true.
In 1991, while working in a strip club, Anna met eighty-six year-old oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall and the two embarked on a highly scandalous relationship, much to the obvious dismay of his worried family. Marshall was richer than any man Anna had ever known, and though she tried to reassure everyone that her intentions were honourable, it came as no surprise when she was labelled a gold-digger who was dating Marshall not for love but for what he could buy her.
While we will never know the true feelings between the couple, another older man entered Anna’s life during this time. She was discovered by Hugh Heffner, who placed her on the cover of the March 1992 issue of his magazine, Playboy. The cover was a success; Anna was a huge hit with readers; and in 1993 she was voted Playmate of the Year. Lots of publicity followed and Smith, a huge Marilyn Monroe fan, decided she was going to be just like her, revelling in dressing up in a replica of the famous Seven Year Itch dress and channelling her inner Marilyn at photo shoots.
Many modelling jobs followed, including shoots for Guess Jeans and H & M, and she even won an appearance in 1994’s Naked Gun 33 and a third, playing Tanya Peters, the villain’s entertaining girlfriend. She gave a fun performance and won much praise, though the same cannot be said for her next “performance” on 27 June 1994 when the twenty-six-year-old Smith walked down the aisle to marry her by now eighty-nine-year-old boyfriend, J. Howard Marshall. They both raised eyebrows in the congregation by wearing matching white outfits, and guests could not help but notice that the groom was much less mobile than his bride, sitting in a wheelchair during the ceremony and then afterwards being wheeled up the aisle with his beaming bride walking in front.
The marriage caused a huge media uproar and J. Howard Marshall’s family were incensed, convinced that the young blonde was only after the ailing billionaire’s money. Their feelings seemed justified when it was discovered that, just hours after the marriage, Marshall was apparently left alone and in despair when Anna preferred to take off for Greece on a modelling assignment rather than spend time alone with him on their honeymoon.
Needless to say, her $50,000 monthly allowance did nothing to quell their fears, and to add to their worries, rumours surfaced that the model refused to live in the marital home, conducted extra-marital affairs and tormented her husband by exposing her naked breasts to others while in his presence. Of course, if any of this was true, Anna was not about to admit it and denied any wrongdoing during several interviews: “I know people think I married Howard for his money, but it’s not true. I love him,” she said. She also declared that she was actively looking after her husband while he was unwell, though her lawyer later revealed that at one point during the marriage, Smith was banned from seeing her husband for more than an hour a day on the orders of Marshall’s lawyers and doctors. The restrictions were finally lifted, though according to Smith’s lawyer, Diana Marshall, “They lost a lot of precious time they could have spent together.”
Eventually, on 4 August 1995, just thirteen months after the wedding, J. Howard Marshall passed away and his son, E. Pierce Marshall, took it upon himself to arrange a private family funeral on 13 August. Unfortunately for him, however, Anna did not agree to this arrangement and after talking it through with friends of her own, arranged a memorial to end all memorial services, in Houston on 7 August.
The grieving widow turned up wearing a low-cut white dress and veil, which some mistakenly took to be her own wedding dress from the year before. It wasn’t, but still, it looked in remarkably bad taste to wear such a plunging gown to the funeral of her dead husband. Added to that, Anna also carried her little black dog under her arm and was accompanied by her young son, also adorned in white.
The event turned out to be quite a spectacle and Smith tried to recite a eulogy but could only manage to say a few words before breaking down. Then several of Anna’s friends – who had only known Marshall very briefly – got up to speak about the couple’s love. Harps played; the minister read from the Bible; and – quite astonishingly – Smith and her son Daniel then sang the Bette Midler song “Wind Beneath My Wings” before running dramatically from the room.
Not surprisingly, Marshall’s family was not in attendance and remained absolutely furious that the model had played such a significant part in their father’s life and his funeral. Almost immediately a battle commenced between Anna and Marshall’s son, Pierce, over who should be entitled to the oil man’s $1.6 billion estate, with both sides arguing that they were the ones entitled to the money. Whole books could be written about the much ballyhooed case, with decisions and appeals going back and forth between the two parties for so long that in 2011 the case was still rattling on – years after the death of both Anna Nicole and E. Pierce Marshall.
In 1996, Smith hit the headlines once again when she was forced to file for bankruptcy after an employee sued her for sexual harassment. She later told Extra what she was going through at the time, saying that she was totally overwhelmed due to the number of people who seemed to be suing her and adding: “I’m this one little girl; I’m this one little person. And I’ve got 50 things thrown at me, and I’m like what did I ever do? I’ve never hurt anybody . . . I couldn’t handle it.” Anna became exceptionally depressed with the situation she was in, and took solace in prescription pills, food and alcohol.
Through the stress of the court case and her day-to-day life, Anna began to pile on weight and soon became addicted to the tablets she was continuously taking. Unfortunately this all backfired when she became so dependent on her medication that she had no knowledge of particular jobs she had done or people to whom she had spoken. Then one evening she accidentally overdosed and was rushed to hospital. She fell into a coma and, by the time she woke, she had developed pneumonia and was given a fifty-fifty chance of survival. It was hit or miss for some time, but somehow Anna managed to pull through, and later told reporters that she had needed to learn to walk and talk all over again. “It was bad,” she confessed. She also assured an interviewer on the Extra programme that she would never take pills again. When asked if she worried she’d ever go back to drugs, she replied, “Oh absolutely not. That will never happen again I promise. No!”
But while it seemed for a time that Anna’s demons had been silenced, it was all an illusion. By the time she started making her reality show, The Anna Nicole Show, in 2002, it was clear that she still had a problem. Panned by the critics for her outrageous behaviour on screen, the programme showed Anna arguing with her staff, including lawyer Howard K. Stern, trying to avoid her toothless cousin who had suddenly shown up on her doorstep, and embarking on a pizza-eating contest with her son and personal assistant.
The entire show became a source of gossip at water-coolers everywhere, particularly when a clearly drunk and overweight Smith was seen gyrating with lap dancers in Las Vegas, and simulating sex (fully clothed, thankfully) with her lawyer. The show was so bad that it became something of a train wreck, but there was a sadder side to it, too, as even the most hard-hearted of people could see that here was a woman in obvious pain and distress. Anna was frequently taped slurring her words, as though back on medication, and while she was most certainly larger than life during most of it, there were certainly times during the show when she seemed like a little girl lost, surrounded by paid friends, when all she really needed was a hug from a loving parent.
Eventually – and predictably – the show was cancelled, and perhaps after seeing herself on screen, Anna took the opportunity to embark on another quest to slim down and clean up her act. She seemed to succeed and began dating photographer Larry Birkhead, conceiving his child in late 2005. Fans would have to wait until June 2006 for an official statement, however, which came – quite predictably – in a video posted on her website.
Floating on an inflatable bed on her swimming pool, Anna announced that she had been reading a lot of gossip about herself in the newspapers and wanted to stop the rumours that had been circulating. “Yes, I am pregnant. I’m happy, I’m very, very happy about it,” she said, before adding that everything was going very well with the pregnancy and she promised to let fans share her excitement through her website in the months to come.
This revelation intrigued both fans and the media, who wondered who was responsible for the pregnancy, but Anna remained tight-lipped and refused to name the father of the child. This decision only succeeded in making the reporters even more intrigued and they began camping out on her doorstep in order to try and catch the future father coming or going from the house. This media attention did not sit well with the pregnant Anna, so she surprised everyone by moving to the Bahamas, where she hoped to live a quieter and more fulfilled life.
By this point it seemed that everything in Anna’s life was going much better and everyone hoped that she had turned her life around – that she was off prescription drugs and happily waiting for the birth. Unfortunately, while on the outside everything did indeed seem to be positive and moving forward nicely, inside all was not as it seemed, though somehow she managed to keep this side of her life very much hidden from fans and reporters.
After her death, the Los Angeles Superior Court acquired a disturbing video of a heavily pregnant Anna Nicole being painted as a clown by a friend’s young daughter. The footage shows the model denying that she is pregnant, and instead she assures the camera that she is only suffering from gas, and that her real baby is lying next to the pool. The camera, controlled by lawyer Howard K. Stern, pans towards the “baby”, which is really a plastic doll. “[Anna] has major brain trouble,” observes the little girl, who seems to be the only sensible person in the house.
The video gets even more bizarre when Anna Nicole is seen changing and caring for the doll in the nursery at her home, cooing and later wheeling it around in a pram. “This footage is worth money!” laughs Howard K. Stern, as a clearly disturbed Anna looks fuzzily into the camera. Bizarrely, it was later denied that Anna was on drugs at all during the episode, but if she wasn’t she must surely have been a much better actress than originally thought.
On 7 September 2006 Dannielynn Hope Marshall Stern was born, and Howard K. Stern was listed as the father on the birth certificate. This was at best a mistake and at worst a lie, as in reality the baby was most definitely the result of Anna’s romance with Larry Birkhead. On the evening of 9 September 2006, while recovering in a Bahamas hospital after the birth, Anna was thrilled to receive a visit from her son, Daniel. Unfortunately, while sitting at her bedside the next morning, the twenty-year-old passed away suddenly, much to the shock and distress of his mother who lay just feet away from his chair.
The autopsy revealed that Daniel had a combination of the drugs Zoloft, Lexapro and Methadone in his body, and the death sent the distraught Anna Nicole into a downward spiral. For many years Daniel had been the only light in the model’s life, and now her little boy was gone, for reasons that remained too unexplained and confusing for the young woman to bear. During the funeral Anna demanded they open the casket and when her wishes were fulfilled, she shocked everyone by trying desperately to climb inside, insisting she wanted to go with her son to the afterlife. Unfortunately this was an episode from which Anna would never recover, and from then on her life seemed to be even more of a tragic roller-coaster than ever before.
On 28 September, just eighteen days after the death of Daniel, Anna Nicole and Howard K. Stern took part in a commitment ceremony to each other in the Bahamas. Photographs of the event were beamed worldwide and people questioned not only the timing of the ceremony, so close to her son’s death, but also the genuineness of the love between the couple. Still, they assured people that their relationship was genuine and denied that it had been made in a bid to halt paternity charges brought by Larry Birkhead in relation to Dannielynn. So determined were they to stop Birkhead having access to the child that Stern even appeared on Larry King Live, declaring that he and Anna had been in a relationship for a long time and that the child was most certainly his own.
The couple decided to settle permanently in the Bahamas; another decision apparently made to avoid the looming paternity tests that awaited them in the United States. Anna Nicole was happy to be a mother again, and caring for her daughter became the only bright spark in the last months of her life. Outwardly she seemed to be coping relatively well, considering, but once again this was an illusion and she was still so distraught at the death of Daniel that shortly after his death she was found floating face down in her swimming pool. She was saved by her partner, Howard K. Stern. She also started telling friends that she just could not get over the idea that Daniel was somehow calling to her from beyond the grave.
“I dream of him every day and every night” she said, and added that she was frightened he was stuck in purgatory, lost and unsure where to go. “He comes to me in my sleep; he’s calling me to come to him,” she told Entertainment Tonight. She also became inconsolable when told that her estranged mother, Virgie, had been to visit Daniel’s grave. Anna claimed that her mother had only visited because she was paid by a magazine, and that she could not believe that the woman had decided to pay the visit on Daniel’s birthday. “It makes me sick to my stomach,” she cried.
To add to her worries, it became apparent that Larry Birkhead – not surprisingly – was not going to stand by and watch his daughter being raised by another man. The stress became too much and she told friends that she didn’t know how long she could cope with it all. Her life was spiralling out of control. Having lost her son and now threatened with worry of losing her daughter too, Anna’s heart was broken; she had no more fight left.
Tragically, on 8 February 2007, during a trip to Hollywood, Florida, Anna Nicole Smith was found unconscious in room 607 of the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino. Friends and staff tried desperately to revive her, before paramedics arrived and rushed her to Memorial Regional Hospital. Paramedics were seen trying to save her as her body was wheeled into the ambulance, but unfortunately she could not be resuscitated and was pronounced dead on arrival, shortly before 3 p.m. It was later decided that Smith had died of an accidental drug overdose, with chloral hydrate being the major component. Other drugs were found in her system included Valium and benzodiazepines but no illegal substances were discovered.
As soon as Anna died, a legal battle raged to decide where she should – and should not – be buried. Howard K. Stern insisted she should be buried next to her son in the Bahamas, while her estranged mother Virgie wanted her back in Texas. Even Larry Birkhead became involved, and although it wasn’t related to the case at all, found himself answering questions about the paternity of Dannielynn. The real-life drama was beamed all over the world and Judge Larry Seidlin became famous not only for his one-liners during proceedings, but also for breaking down in tears on giving his verdict that he wanted to give custody of Anna’s remains to Richard Milstein, the lawyer for Dannielynn. He specifically wished for Anna to be buried with her son, Daniel: “I want them to be together,” he cried.
Both he and Stern got their wish and Anna’s body was eventually buried next to that of her son, Daniel Smith. The ashes of her late husband J. Howard Marshall were also laid with her and a huge, black granite marker with photographs of Smith and her son was placed over the plot.
Meanwhile, on 10 April 2007 the paternity case was finally resolved when it was declared that Larry Birkhead was indeed the father of Anna’s daughter. Dannielynn was handed over to her father in order to begin her new life in the United States. She paid tribute to her mother in November 2012 by becoming a model for Guess Jeans. Looking remarkably like Anna Nicole, the girl posed happily for the cameras, and her father later told reporters that it was entirely her decision to take part in the campaign – that she wanted her photograph on the Guess bags, just like her mother had done many years before her.
While Howard K. Stern claimed to be the father of Dannielynn and took part in a commitment ceremony with the little girl’s mother, in the end he lost both and resigned himself to life without them. However, before he was able to move on completely, it was announced that he and other members of Smith’s entourage – her psychiatrist and her doctor – would be charged with “crimes of prescribing, administering and dispensing controlled substances to an addict”. There were also questions raised about whether or not there had been a conspiracy to use fake names in order to acquire drugs for Smith, and by the time the case went to court in August 2010, the media was once again full of Anna Nicole news, three and a half years after her sudden death.
By the end of the trial, Smith’s doctor was acquitted of all charges, but Stern and the psychiatrist were found guilty and due to be sentenced in January 2011. When that day came the judge surprisingly decided that there was insufficient evidence to show that they intended to break the law and threw the case out of court. The only conviction that remained was a charge of fraud against the psychiatrist, though that was later reduced to a misdemeanour.
This decision angered many fans who believed – rightly or wrongly – that Stern had something to do with Anna Nicole’s wild behaviour and the drug abuse which eventually led to her death. They were not the only ones, it would seem, as in October 2012 – two years after the initial guilty verdict – a California court made the decision that the judge had been wrong to throw out the case and that the convictions should be looked at again. Judge Robert Perry was then given the unenviable task of deciding what to do next: to consider Stern’s request for a new trial (which would mean that the original case would have to be dismissed as the new trial could constitute double jeopardy); to find another grounds for dismissal; or to sentence the former lawyer to prison or probation based on the original conviction. As of March 2013, no decision has been made as to what the outcome will be, though if the former court appearances of Anna Nicole Smith are anything to go by, the case could run and run.
And what of Anna? Much has been said about her life and personality, though most of it is derogatory and untrue. Her life was so full of twists and turns that it is almost hard to believe it really happened. One thing that is not often reported, however, is that in spite of all the scandal and intrigue, she had a very big heart, lavishing her friends and children with attention and love in equal measure.
She was also extremely generous to her fans, as demonstrated when she lived for a time at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive, the last home of her idol, Marilyn Monroe. She didn’t stay long, due to her son’s apparent distaste for the property, but while she was there Marilyn’s fans would often write and tell her how much the actress meant to them. Instead of ignoring the fan mail that came for her idol, she would often reply and send photographs of herself inside the home. These photos regularly appear on the internet, a testimony not only to how she appreciated her fans, but also how much she adored Marilyn Monroe.
It is a tragedy that, in the end, the woman who wanted so much to be like Marilyn, who dressed in replica costumes and rented her home to be “close” to her idol, ended up passing away in a strikingly similar situation. But then, given her tragic life, perhaps that was always inevitable.