Blonde Ambition (16 page)

   In an unusual turn of events,
Playboy
denied Vickie a publicity tour. "We didn't do a publicity tour when she was Miss May, frankly because she sounded silly. She talked like a baby," Elizabeth Norris, former
Playboy
Director of Public Relations said. However, despite the lack of extra publicity, Vickie Smith quickly became one of the most talked about Playboy Playmates, and this voluptuous, full-figured woman got noticed big time.

   Paul Marciano, president of Guess Jeans, approached Vickie shortly after her appearance in the March 1992 issue of
Playboy
. "I didn't know what Guess jeans were," Vickie said. This didn't stop her from signing on to be the new face of Guess, taking over from model Claudia Schiffer. "She brings back visions of Hollywood glamour," Guess photographer Daniela Federici told
People
magazine. "We haven't seen that kind of charisma since Marilyn Monroe."

   It was while working with Marciano that Vickie decided — like Norma Jeane Mortenson before her, who was successfully reborn as Marilyn Monroe—she needed to change her name. According to Anna, "Paul Marciano and me and one of his friends were sitting around coming up with a stage name, and that's where [the name] came from." With the new name, Anna Nicole's image of a rags-to-riches model and Playmate had become complete.

   Meanwhile, Marshall showered Anna with gifts. Over the course of their courtship, Marshall gave Anna a fifteen-acre ranch, a car, endless amounts of cash, and on one specific shopping trip, two million dollars in Harry Winston jewelry. "He supported me 100 percent," Anna said.

   According to her half brother, Donnie, the gifts didn't stop after Anna became famous. J. Howard Marshall loved shrimp and they'd always eat at Anna's old place of employment, the Red Lobster. In 1993, Donnie and Anna's newly reconnected dad, Donald Hogan, met Anna and J. Howard Marshall at the Red Lobster in Houston. After lunch, Mr. Marshall put on the table a box about the size of a candy box, and told her, "This is a gift." She opened the box in front of everyone. It was filled with $50,000 in crisp hundred-dollar bills wrapped in gold labels.

   "You could tell he gave her the money because he wanted to," Donnie said. "She kissed him on the forehead. Then handed the dollars to her bodyguard." Donnie said before the lunch meeting, his sister pulled him aside, telling him that she didn't want J. Howard Marshall or his team to know she was dating anyone else. Donnie said she was very clear beforehand that "that's my bodyguard, not my boyfriend, remember?"

   Her father told Donnie afterward, "Did you see that money? I wanted to grab it and run!"

   "He [Marshall] was throwing money at my sister like it was chump change," Donnie told me. "He had been ready to give up on life. She showed him that life is worth living. He went out with a bang marrying my sister."

   After over two years of dating and gifts, Marshall again proposed to Anna, offering her a 22-carat engagement ring. She accepted. "I promised him that I would marry him after I made something of myself, and I got to where I was a name. And I promised him, and it was time to do something. And I wanted to have children." Remember, there was a sixty-plus year age difference between the two of them.

   By this time, Anna was getting seen. She had a new name, a sexy image, and a highly coveted modeling contract. It seemed like her luck would never end. That year, Anna was named
Playboy
's Playmate of the Year. On the cover, Anna wore little more than a piece of fabric to cover her breasts and in her interview she said, "I want to be the new Marilyn Monroe and find my own Clark Gable." At her Playmate of the Year party, she said, "It is a very big honor for me. I have always wanted this. I am just so happy and thrilled and I am so glad Mr. Hefner chose me."

   "Her Playmate of the Year tour was first class all the way," Elizabeth Norris recalled. "She loved riding in limos and seeing all the cameras waiting for her." Hugh Hefner, the founder of
Playboy
, seemed to be quite proud of Anna. "There's something magic I think that happens between her and a camera," Hefner said in an
Entertainment Tonight
interview. "A lot of women are beautiful, but that kind of magic is special, and she has that."

   But perhaps Anna got too caught up in her
Playboy
experiences, not knowing when to turn it on and turn it off. Donnie and her father met her once in a hotel room she was sharing with her bodyguard. She started stripping during lunch with her dad and brother present. According to Donnie, she took off her top and was about to take off her panties, when someone asked her what she was doing. "Oh sorry," she said. "I thought I was still at work. I work twelve hours a day."

   In the midst of celebrating her successes, Anna kept her promise and married Marshall on June 27, 1994, at the White Dove Wedding Chapel in Houston. Because of his age and health, Marshall sat in his wheelchair, dressed in his all white tuxedo, waiting at the end of the aisle for Anna to come down. The wedding was very small; hardly anyone was there. Wearing a "long, hand-beaded wedding gown, with train and, of course, a plunging neckline," Anna walked on white rose petals down the aisle. At the end of the ceremony, Anna and Marshall headed back up the aisle together. They then released two doves outside the chapel. Afterward, they fed each other cake and did a special champagne toast. The celebration, however, was short-lived. Friends and family members say Anna kissed her new husband goodbye and left for Greece with her bodyguard boyfriend, a bodyguard that her husband was reportedly paying for.

   After the wedding, Anna had her modeling life in Los Angeles, and Marshall had his life in Texas where he continued to live. According to a security guard at a New Year's party at the Playboy Mansion, Anna was seen having sex in the pool and called the next day to say she lost her wedding ring. The security guard told me he found it and it was stored for six months before she picked it up.

   But her friends and co-workers say despite Anna's antics, she always found time for Marshall. According to a
Playboy
interview with makeup artist Alexis Vogel, "Every day at 5 p.m. she would go into the models' lounge, a room off the studio with a couch and phone, to call him. They would talk for only a few minutes, but you could tell she was sweet on him."

   "He called me his sleeping pill," Anna later told CNN. "Every night I had to call him."

   According to an interview Anna's aunt, Elaine Tabor, did with ABC, "Anna Nicole [spent] days helping an 88-year-old man become a boy again, riding an all-terrain vehicle, living it up as if he had never aged." It seemed as if the twosome were showing each other a good time.

   But the media wasn't quite as convinced of Anna's intentions in marrying Marshall. Tabloids frequently claimed that she had only married him for his money. "They think I'm a gold digger," Anna said. "And it's not true." Marshall's own son, Pierce Marshall, who at the time was almost twice as old as his step-mom Anna Nicole, was also not convinced at all. Pierce's lawyer, Rusty Hardin, says Anna was "unfaithful" to Marshall and that "she wanted to get as much from him as she could." He said, "I believe it's clear J. Howard loved her and she didn't love him."

   Despite all the bad press and no matter what anyone else said, Anna firmly held that she truly loved Marshall. "I loved him for so much of what he did for me and my son," she told CNN. "I mean, I just loved him so—I've never had love like that before. No one has ever loved me and done things for me and respected me and didn't care about what people said about me. I mean, he truly loved me and I loved him for it." Anna claimed that she and Marshall even tried to have children. "We tried, but it didn't happen." The age difference might have been a logistical problem.

   The whirlwind and controversy surrounding their relationship ended as quickly as it had begun. After only fourteen months of marriage, Marshall died of pneumonia on August 4,

1995. At his funeral, Anna wore her wedding dress. The death of Marshall created Anna's biggest public fight: was she or was she not entitled to inherit part of Marshall's massive estate? Was she a prostitute for pay or a rightfully married spouse? In his last will, Marshall declared that his son, Pierce, was to inherit his estate. However, Anna claimed that Marshall intended "to provide for her after his death, and set up a separate trust fund in her name." She began her battle for what she called her rightful claim to half of her late husband's $1.6 billion estate, money he amassed over the years from the oil and natural gas industry.

   Rusty Hardin, the Marshall family attorney, says there is no evidence supporting these claims. However, in the midst of this legal battle, a video, made at Christmas shortly before Marshall's death, shows Vickie trying to get him to say something on the tape. "Say it just like you did last night," she said.

   Marshall is then seen on-camera saying, "Vicky Nicole Smith shall receive the house, which she calls the ranch, and the townhouse, and her Mercedes automobile . . . and everything else that I have ever given her now and forever. I love you." This video became the subject of large debate concerning whether or not it entitled Anna to anything other than what she had already received. When Marshall initially died, the Texas probate court ruled that Anna Nicole should not get a cent of Marshall's fortune.

   "There's no reference in that video to her getting half after his death, just that she keeps what he gave her when he was alive," Rusty Hardin explained. "This was never played before in court. If we get a new trial, we will bring that video in front row and center."

   The case was left at the Texas court decision until 1996, when Anna filed for bankruptcy in the state of California after Maria Antonia Cerrato, her former housekeeper and baby sitter, sued Anna for sexual harassment and was awarded a judgment of $850,000. Since any money potentially due her from the Marshall estate would be considered part of her potential assets, the bankruptcy court got involved.

   The case eventually went back and forth, up and down, between the Texas probate court and the California bankruptcy court until it forced the matter into federal court. According to the W
ashington Post
, in 2002 "a bankruptcy court determined that she was entitled to $475 million, an award later reduced by U.S. District Judge David O. Carter to $88.5 million in damages from Pierce Marshall." The victory, however, was short lived. In December 2004, "a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, based in San Francisco, threw out Judge Carter's ruling, declaring that only Texas's courts have jurisdiction."

   In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to hear the appeal of that decision. The Bush administration even got involved, directing the Solicitor General to intercede on Smith's behalf out of an interest to expand federal court jurisdiction over state probate disputes. Finally, on May 1, 2006, a pregnant Anna Nicole Smith learned that the highest court in the land unanimously decided in Smith's favor. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the majority opinion and, though the decision did not give Smith any money, it affirmed her right to pursue her share of it in federal court.

   On June 20, 2006, Anna's sixty-seven-year-old stepson, E. Pierce Marshall, died from an "aggressive infection." Attorney Rusty Hardin told me, "He was okay on Friday, celebrating the upcoming Father's Day with his family, then on Tuesday morning he was in a coma, and died that Tuesday afternoon."

   His widow, Elaine T. Marshall, now represents the Marshall estate and says that she will continue to fight to prevent Anna's heirs from getting a dime. Rusty Hardin calls Howard K. Stern "a lawyer wannabe" and Hardin puts his own legal plans bluntly: "We'll fight this to the bitter end."

   Regarding Larry Birkhead and Dannielynn ever seeing any of the Marshall fortune, Rusty Hardin says, "Give me a break." He explains it this way: "This is a case of a younger woman who marries a much older guy. She then sleeps with many different guys. One gets her pregnant. She moves out of the country to avoid him. She has the baby. Then she says to the family of the guy who used to be married to her, that it all goes to that new baby. This doesn't make any sense. This is outrageous. This baby is the product of a bunch of relationships and has nothing to do with J. Howard Marshall."

   Throughout the ten years of fighting for the money, Anna became increasingly close to lawyer Howard K. Stern, a UCLAtrained lawyer who passed the bar in 1994. Anna and Stern, "met in 1996," according to Howard's testimony in that Florida courtroom with Judge Seidlin. It's been said that his good friend, Ron Rale, brought the two of them together. According to Rusty Hardin, "Anna has always been with attorneys who wanted big percentages of this deal."

   In 2002, Howard told
Access Hollywood
"I kind of wear two different hats for Anna Nicole. One is lawyer and the other is friend." According to Jackie Hatten and other friends, Howard also played another role in Anna's life—gatekeeper, determining who would get access to her and who wouldn't. When she became pregnant, Howard was even more controlling about who was allowed to see her, even, and perhaps especially, the baby's father. Larry Birkhead told me that while Anna was pregnant, he had to "rescue her" at a hotel because Howard was giving her so much grief about Larry.

   It was Howard who, when Anna was fighting for her late husband's fortune, presented Anna's direct examination at trial. But Rusty Hardin said the real attorney leading the case to get Marshall's fortune is Philip Boesch with the Boesch Law Firm out of California. Rusty Hardin told me Boesch has been "my main nemesis on the Marshall case."

   Howard K. Stern eventually dissolved his law firm. According to the
Seattle Times
, "By 2002, [Anna] was his only client. He never charged her for working as her personal lawyer . . . but Smith paid rent on his Santa Monica apartment and for everything they did together, sometimes giving him cash. [Former law partner Dave] Shebby says he and Stern had to end their brief partnership because Stern wasn't bringing in any income."