Anna Nicoles Mama Said That I Dont Wanna See Anna Fall Down Again
When cameras were off, Anna Nicole Smith was however Vicki Lynn, friends say
Before she was an icon, she was a girl from a small town in Texas.
To the world, Anna Nicole Smith was a glamorous, voluptuous blonde Hollywood bombshell. But those who knew her best say she warred privately with the public ridicule about her relationships, prescription drug apply and weight.
In an exclusive new interview, the father of her girl and "20/20" consultant Larry Birkhead, spoke with "20/twenty" near the other side of Smith that he got to witness.
"When you talk most Anna Nicole and you talk well-nigh where she came from ... yous talk about the courtroom battles," he said. "In between, in that location were a lot of happy moments for her. At that place was a lot of highs before there was a lot of lows."
Spotter the total story on "20/twenty" Tonight at 9 p.one thousand. ET on ABC.
Equally 1 of her all-time friends Frankie Rodriguez said, it was every bit if she were "two people": the siren who married an 89-twelvemonth-old billionaire and the shy, naive, small-scale-town Texas daughter desperately working to support her son and brand something of herself.
"In that location was Vickie Lynn Marshall and Anna Nicole Smith," he told "twenty/20." "Any kinda photographic camera, you lot merely yelled out her name, 'Anna Nicole.' When she turned around, it was on the spot; you saw Anna Nicole."
"The minute that camera left, it was a whole other person. She was dorsum to Vickie Lynn," he said. "I [am] very fortunate to take met and gotten to know Vickie Lynn… How she did it, I don't know. But whatever she was doing, it was making everybody watch."
Those who truly loved her saw her equally she truly was. They think how she bravely fought to support her family and prove that she loved her married man and deserved a part of his fortune. They saw her individual attempt to navigate countless medical and legal troubles -- moments in which she showed that Vickie Lynn continued to live on in Anna Nicole Smith.
Smith's life in the hometown she escaped
Smith was born Vickie Lynn Hogan outside of Houston. Her childhood best friend, Jo McLemore, remembered Smith's mother as very stern.
"Vickie'southward childhood life was tough," McLemore said. "[Her mother] was very... forthright and very strict."
At 15 years old, Smith was sent to live with her aunt in Mexia, Texas, a tiny boondocks of about 7,000 people.
"I remember when I dated Anna Nicole and she'd e'er talk about Mexia, Texas. She always wanted to get out of there," Birkhead told "20/20."
McLemore remembered that Smith attended Mexia High School, until she dropped out in the 10th grade.
"When she went to school here, in Mexia, she was miserable," McLemore said. "She was having a hard time with being bullied. At that indicate, I think, after all she'd been through ... simply all the struggles in her life, she was finally fed upwardly."
McLemore remembered hanging out with Smith on the side of the local roads.
"In that location was nothing else to practice here," she said, laughing. "There'south no picture show theaters. I mean there wasn't Starbucks or anything. Basically the main identify to eat was Krispy's."
McLemore had been working at Jim's Krispy Fried Chicken. She said Smith would come in every twenty-four hour period.
"She'd order a big potable. Merely she e'er looked really sad to me," McLemore said. "When she started working hither, we immediately hit information technology off… One of the memories I have of her is, nosotros'd sit here together and stare out the window, and just watch traffic go by."
"She was so perfect to me. Perfect face ... and I would tell her, 'You are so, and then pretty,'" McLemore said.
Smith started dating the fry cook at the restaurant, Baton Smith, and before long, they were married, making her Vickie Smith, McLemore said.
"Billy was also a loftier school dropout," she said. "They were so young. He was sixteen. She was 17. Smith had her first kid, Daniel, at 18."
Smith dances in Houston
By the time Anna Nicole was 19, Billy Smith was out of the moving picture. In 1986, she brought her infant son to Houston, with no high schoolhouse degree or work skills to speak of. She worked for a while at a Walmart and Red Lobster, and so decided to try a unlike direction.
To provide for Daniel, who was living with her mother, Smith worked hard every bit a dancer at a strip club, where she made a name for herself. She began to undergo breast augmentation surgeries to heighten her figure.
In 1991, 86-year-quondam J. Howard Marshall Ii, a billionaire from his investment in Koch Industries, came into her social club. His wife had passed away and Lady Walker, a flamboyant exotic dancer with whom he had a 10-twelvemonth relationship, had too died.
"He had no will to live and I went over to see him," Smith said in an interview with "xx/20" in 2000. "He got a little twinkle in his eyes and he asked me to trip the light fantastic for him, and I did."
She said Marshall was "really, really funny" and "brilliant."
"Gosh, he had so many stories," she said. "He was just an amazing man. He was merely actually amazing."
"She would call him her sugar booger and sweetheart and all that," McLemore said. "They needed each other, in more of a sense than people understood, and so, they but took care of each other."
Marshall proposed to Smith but she declined, insisting that she wanted to make her own way. He bought her millions in jewelry, a ranch and horses, a red Mercedes convertible and breast augmentation surgery. He proposed repeatedly, including one time at his favorite eating house, Red Lobster. She continued to say no, saying she wanted to be able to support herself earlier she remarried.
Smith becomes international star
A friend sent photos of Smith to a lookout for Playboy, who hired her for the publication. McLemore didn't believe it at offset.
"Around 1992, my uncle chosen me who lived hither and said, '[Smith]… made Playboy,'" she said. "I was similar, 'What?' He said, 'She fabricated Playboy.' And I said, 'She did not.' And he said, 'Yes, yes, I promise. Get the magazine.'"
She felt dueling emotions virtually her friend's success.
"I was kind of weirded out," McLemore said. "I was proud of her, but I was like … she's up hither now and I'm down hither... I'one thousand a little person at present, I recall, is what I was feeling.'"
Smith was photographed for Guess jeans ads and became internationally recognized as she started modeling abroad. After numerous Playboy appearances, she was named Playmate of the Twelvemonth in 1993. She started modeling overseas and was signed with William Morris, one of Hollywood'southward biggest talent agencies.
She even appeared in the movies "The Hudsucker Proxy" and "Naked Gun 33 ⅓." She after worked with filmmaker Ray Martino in the moving-picture show "To the Limit" in 1995, where she played a CIA double amanuensis, and "Skyscraper" in 1996.
Meanwhile, Smith's implants kept her in abiding hurting, Martino said.
"Her back wasn't potent enough to carry them, and so the doctors started to give her pain medication," he said.
Smith said she was taking prescription drugs for migraines and insomnia.
"I had Vicodin and Xanax. [Those are] prescription drugs that I take to take," she said in 1994. "I mean, I don't consider that hard drugs. It doesn't make me loftier. I've been taking it for years. Information technology just helps my headaches."
In 1994, she decided to marry Marshall. At the wedding, her son was a ring bearer and Marshall voiced a desire to adopt him.
"Information technology was never about the coin, and she loved this homo," Martino said. "She would sit close to him with her legs on the couch over him. And he would laugh and they were as happy and communicative with each other as ii people could be."
But their union -- and their 63-year age divergence -- became a punchline across pop culture. After only vi months, Marshall fell ill.
"Nosotros were in the middle of shooting in Las Vegas and she flew down to be with him," Martino said. "She loved him. Actually loved him so much."
J. Howard Marshall was hospitalized and his condition was conspicuously on the decline. His son Pierce had been given power of attorney and Marshall's caregiver Betty Morgan became his legal guardian.
Then, Anna found herself cutting off financially. At 1 point she was only immune to run into her husband for thirty minutes a visit. The family said that was because of the physician's instructions, but she was heartbroken.
In 1995, Martino remembered breaking the news of Marshall's death to Smith in New York.
"I said, 'Howard passed away,'" he remembered. "She just bowed her head … and she started crying."
"After my husband passed, it was really, really hard on me," Smith told "xx/twenty" in 2000. "He knew me when I was nobody and that's what people don't empathize, and I don't wanna be called a gold digger considering I'g non. I could've married him a week after nosotros met, or two weeks after nosotros met. I could've married him years before, and I didn't. I didn't. I went out and I made something of myself."
After her husband'due south expiry, Smith finds love once more
Marshall's expiry spurred years of acrimony and court battles betwixt the widow and Marshall'due south son. Start, they went to court debating what to do with his remains. When Marshall was cremated, his ashes were divided between his widow and his son, and they each held divide funerals.
Pierce was the principal beneficiary. Smith got nothing in the will, so she sued Pierce in Texas for a share of the estate.
It was a dark time for Smith. She and William Morris had also parted ways and "things weren't going well for her," Martino said.
"Her career was merely basically at a standstill," said Frankie Rodriguez, a friend she fabricated around this time. "She wasn't doing anything and she was trying to notice her next big affair."
At this point, Smith was getting treatment for substance corruption. She was legally prescribed an array of medicine to accost everything from migraines to breadbasket issues and back pain from implants to seizures.
The media lit into her for her drug apply but was likewise fell in their attacks about her weight.
"Information technology's hard. I mean, I went through a lot. You know, people, when I gained a lot of weight... people thought I was just similar, partying, doing this and that," she said in 2000. "I hateful, I'm having seizures, I'm having panic attacks. My married man simply died and people call up I don't care."
Against the communication of her friends, Smith agreed to star in a reality show that, at the time, had the highest rating ever for East!, the all-time debut for a cable reality series and the second best debut for an original serial on bones cable. By the second season, notwithstanding, audiences stopped tuning in.
Afterward an onslaught of negative attending, Rodriguez said, "she kind of disappeared… She was out of the spotlight."
Sponsored by weight loss brand TrimSpa, she lost 69 pounds. Rodriguez said information technology was kind of a renaissance for her.
"She was dorsum. Bigger and larger than life," he said. "She couldn't be more than happier at the time."
That was also around the time that she started dating Larry Birkhead.
"The first fourth dimension that I ever encountered Anna was in my hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, working at the Kentucky Derby. I was working as a lensman," Birkhead said. "I looked at her and I said, 'At that place's something about her ... she's just beautiful.' And so I talked to her, I interacted with her and we exchanged this buss."
Rodriguez said she was "really smitten" with Birkhead, who said he felt like he'd seen a unlike side of Smith when he photographed her at a children'due south campsite charity result.
"I got to kinda witness Anna hanging out with the kids," he said. "It was [a] stripped-down version of this small Texas girl that I actually appreciated."
Birkhead said he shortly had his numberless packed, ready to live at Smith's dwelling. She lived with her son, her assistant and her chaser, Howard K. Stern, who also acted as somewhat of a manager and publicist, Birkhead said.
Before long, Smith became pregnant with her second child. Birkhead said that's when Smith all of a sudden began to push button him away.
"She actually told me that she was significant, and that Larry was the father. She loved him," Rodriguez said. "She was very happy with him. I don't know what happened. I don't know how it got to where it got."
Smith whisked away to the Commonwealth of the bahamas
Smith and Stern moved to the Bahamas for the final function of her pregnancy.
"Her and I, we've actually had advice when she was in the Bahamas," Rodriguez said. "The conversations would happen in the eye of the night… I don't know if she was doin' it because she didn't want Howard to hear. "
On Sept. vii, 2006, she gave nascency to daughter Danielynn, with Stern at her side. Two days subsequently, she was joined in the hospital by her son, Daniel, as she recovered.
Smith woke up where Daniel had fallen asleep next to her, merely then realized her son had died.
Though his cause of death was determined to be a drug overdose, the question of where he got one of the drugs is nevertheless unanswered.
Daniel actually had a prescription for Lexapro, and he was taking Zoloft because he was broken-hearted virtually his flight. Smith had been taking methadone for years, but it's not articulate if he secretly took it from her.
Martino said Daniel'due south death devastated Anna Nicole.
"Having the beauty of the birth of a infant and then the loss of your love, your son, in the same bed," he said. "She just started to emotionally, mentally, started to cave in."
Smith'south final days
While in the Bahamas, Smith met a local couple, Brigitte Neven and King Eric Gibson, and institute some peace going out on their boat.
"We would have people out fishing. So, i day, a guy came and said why don't you lot take Anna Nicole fishing?" Neven said. "From then on … she decided to phone call King Eric 'daddy' and called me 'mummy.' And then, they were merely part of the family unit."
Birkhead said Smith saw Neven as a motherly figure "because she was calming and spiritual."
"She was attracted to families … because she didn't take that," Martino said.
Neven remembers Smith loved being on the boat.
"She was totally different. She was just existence gratis," she said.
Smith loved it and so much she looked into buying her own gunkhole. She found i in Florida, and left with Stern and others to choice it upward. It would be the last time she saw her baby.
Before she left, Smith was given a shot of human growth hormone and vitamin B12 in her left side, which she had been taking to maintain her weight. But during the flying, her side started to hurt, and by the time she reached the hotel, she was very sick, with a fever of 105 degrees.
Although the people with her urged her to become to the hospital, she refused.
Birkhead said he wasn't surprised she wasn't taken to the infirmary.
"She was scared," he said. "The press would notice out she was at that place and plough it into some large headline and she didn't want."
Over the adjacent few days, she was sick and listless. She had a visible infection.
On the morn of Feb. 8, 2007, she could barely stand. Neven remembered Stern had to help her to the bathroom.
Stern left a few hours later to go on the appointment to check out the boat Anna hoped to buy, the reason for the trip to Florida.
"I walked over and I realized at that place was something wrong with Anna," Neven said. "There was definitely something incorrect. She looked like she was sleeping but I saw that she wasn't sleeping. But I realized that she wasn't breathing. There was no chest movement and then it all exploded."
Neven told the wife of Smith'south bodyguard to phone call 911, but instead, she called her husband, who chosen Stern. As this was happening, the babysitter's wife tried to resuscitate Smith.
Eventually the bodyguard Maurice Brighthaupt arrived at the hotel and called 911, but 38 minutes had passed. Emergency workers arrived to the scene and tried to revive her.
"I started getting a little bit emotional, and I only started screaming her name," Brighthaupt, said. "I asked her, I said, 'Baby girl, if you've got annihilation in y'all, please come dorsum. Dannielynn needs you.' I said, 'Forget it. I need y'all. We all need you.'"
She was brought to the hospital, where she was declared expressionless.
Even in death, drama followed Smith. In that location was an argument virtually where to coffin her, which turned into a legal dispute. Ultimately a judge ruled that Smith should be buried in the Bahamas, next to her son Daniel.
Meanwhile, there was an ongoing legal battle over who fathered Smith'south daughter. Stern said he and Smith had a human relationship and he was the father. Smith's ex-swain Mark Hatten, who claimed he'd given her frozen sperm, and Prince Frederic von Anhalt, the quaternary hubby of Zsa Zsa Gabor, besides said they might be the father. Eventually, Birkhead'south legal squad was able to get a sample of the baby's Deoxyribonucleic acid.
Birkhead remembers the moment he was determined to be Danielynn'southward biological father.
"I'm in this Bahama islands courtroom… They opened the envelope, and they said that Larry Birkhead is the father," he said. "I remember putting my head downwardly in my hands and for 1 moment, I caught myself looking over my shoulder thinking I was turning to Anna similar she was gonna exist right there."
Birkhead said he picked up Danielynn that day subsequently court.
"She smiled at me and she was laughing," he said.
He said that Stern taught him her routine and how to feed and modify her.
"To this day Howard has been supportive, Birkhead said. "Nearly [as if] the same loyalty that he had for Anna has at present carried over to me and Dannielynn."
"Dannielynn, she has a big center like her mom had," he said of his now 14-year-old daughter.
Fourteen years afterwards Smith's death, Rodriguez says information technology "still hurts the same … like information technology was yesterday. Probably because there's then many unanswered questions."
McLemore said she wishes she could "go back in time" and tell Smith, "I dear her very much and I miss her."
"This was a small-town girl who went to the Supreme Court twice, a Playboy Bunny, a Guess model, an actress, that came from the sticks of Mexia in Texas," Birkhead said. "You couldn't make this upwardly, and information technology happened. She lived information technology. She lived fast and she lived large… She inspired a lot of people. I retrieve she changed a lot of lives. That's why I think, to this 24-hour interval, at that place'south nonetheless a fascination about Anna Nicole, and I recollect in that location volition be for a long fourth dimension."
Editor's note: A previous version of this story incorrectly detailed the preferences of the parties in the legal dispute over Smith's burial. This commodity has also been changed to clarify events related to J. Howard Marshall's illness, and the litigation after his expiry.
Source: https://abcnews.go.com/US/cameras-off-anna-nicole-smith-vicki-lynn-friends/story?id=75642872
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