Anna Nicole Smith’s Daughter Dannielynn Marks 18th Birthday With ‘Beetlejuice’ Celebration
Anna Nicole Smith left her set in some surprising locations.
Following an impoverished upbringing in minute-metropolis Texas she grew to turn into one of essentially the most well-known faces of the ’90s as a Playboy duvet lady and Bet mannequin. She had a actuality demonstrate earlier than tv used to be overrun with actuality presentations. When she used to be 26, she married an 89-three hundred and sixty five days-used billionaire whom she’d met whereas stripping. And in 2006 she ended up at the United States Supreme Court docket whereas mute combating for her inheritance 11 years after her husband died.
Her rise to fame could possibly possibly own scheme as a shock to of us that knew Vickie Lynn Hogan as fair a little one in Mexia, when she dropped out of excessive college at 15 and went to work at a instant-food rooster restaurant.
But factual as her idol Marilyn Monroe transcended her humble beginnings as Norma Jean Baker, the lady who would turn into Anna Nicole Smith had always dreamed of bigger and greater things.
And admire Monroe, Smith in no design made it out of her thirties.
Smith—born on Nov. 28, 1967—feeble to trail with a handful of Monroe movies in her derive. She admitted to having four of them with her on a commute to Fresh York throughout a 1993 appearance on Dwell With Regis and Kathie Lee.
Asked if it used to be appropriate that she hadn’t “blossomed” until after the junior skedaddle, Smith smiled and acknowledged, “No, until after I had my son, then I went potential out,” relating to the 36-28-38 measurements that made her this kind of memorable centerfold. “They’ve so many different stories, no person’s gettin’ the relaxation factual.”
On the moment she used to be relating to the starting up set apart memoir of her bombshell curves, but in hindsight it used to be an eerily prescient converse regarding the days forward, when participants would rupture to discover the person amid the trappings of excess that soon surrounded her.
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Her of us, Donald Hogan and Virgie Arthur, divorced in 1969, and when her mom remarried Donald Hart, Vickie Lynnn changed her title to Nikki Hart. She dropped out of excessive college and married Billy Wayne Smith in 1985, when she used to be 17. They welcomed their son Daniel Smith on Jan. 22, 1986.
Statuesque at 5-foot-11, she went from 125 pounds to 211 pounds throughout her being pregnant—but she could possibly possibly not acknowledge Kathie Lee Gifford‘s plea for knowledge when the host requested how she lost the burden “in all of the factual locations” and ended up with her enviable proportions. “I make no longer work out,” Smith responded sheepishly.
Her gargantuan shatter came when she landed the March 1992 duvet of Playboy (then going by Vickie Smith) and in 1993 Hugh Hefner named her Playmate of the Year.
Bet founder Paul Marciano remembered his first meeting with Smith, soon after her Playboy debut, in a July 2017 interview with Paper journal.
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“I stumbled on her in San Antonio. I used to be capturing GUESS Young participants and she or he came with her son Daniel,” he acknowledged. “I acknowledged, ‘Who are you?’ She acknowledged she used to be a waitress at Red Lobster. The entirety I requested her she known as me ‘sir.’ She had in no design performed photos earlier than. I had the youth’ photographer shoot her on the gap. I took her to Fresh York and bought her an agent and adjusted her title. To me, she used to be Anna, but Anna Smith didn’t sound factual so we did Anna Nicole Smith.”
Smith succeeded Claudia Schiffer as the face of the emblem, promoting a refreshingly proper (even though mute unreal) physique kind among the grunge-period waifs so in type at the time.
“I feel masses of females can disclose to my dimension,” Smith—who began calling herself Anna Nicole when capturing her first Bet marketing campaign—agreed on Dwell in 1993.
She had moreover factual kicked off her acting profession with one line in The Hudsucker Proxy—and she or he had reunited with her biological father for the major time since her of us’ divorce in 1969, enlisting a carrier known as Starting up Fogeys to discover him down, which they did in about a week.
The usage of her maiden title and no longer revealing who she used to be, Smith flew him out to L.A. “He goes, ‘oh my god, I’ve checked out you,'” she recalled, laughing and moreover wincing somewhat in embarrassment. “Within the Playboy,” she clarified to a speechless Regis and Kathie Lee.
“She used to be living the dream,” Larry Birkhead, Anna Nicole’s ancient boyfriend and father of her daughter, Dannielynn Birkhead, reminisced to ABC Data in 2017. “Right here she is, fair a little lady from Texas, went from working in a rooster shack to making movies with gargantuan stars in Hollywood.”
Smith’s well-known person used to be indeed on the rise. But it no doubt used to be barely a three hundred and sixty five days later when her Cinderella memoir took an irrevocable turn for the outlandish.
Smith and husband Billy divorced in 1993 and the next three hundred and sixty five days she married Texas oil neatly off person J. Howard Marshall, whom she had met years beforehand when she used to be working at a strip membership and who used to be 63 years her senior. She insisted she married him for admire, no longer cash. She urged ABC Data in 2000 that Marshall “took me out of a frightening space and he cares for me and my son, and in return, I took care of him, and I cherished him for that.”
Marshall died in 1995 and, extra special to the outrage of his heirs, Smith sued for half of her gradual husband’s $1.6 billion estate, declaring that—whereas he didn’t embody her in his will—he had supposed to space up a belief to set for her as he beforehand had space a belief up years earlier than for his family.
Marshall’s son E. Pierce Marshall, who inherited virtually about all of the estate, argued that his father had already been adequately beneficiant to his trophy companion, showering her with items and treating her to a lavish everyday life.
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A sexual harassment suit filed in opposition to Smith by her son’s nanny resulted in a $800,000 judgment in opposition to her after she uncared for several depositions, leading to Smith filing for financial disaster in California. Pierce then filed a defamation teach in opposition to her financial disaster, wrathful at her claims that he had interfered with his father’s intentions and prevented him from atmosphere up the belief for Smith, setting apart the used man in the system.
Broke and in debt, Smith used to be taking gargantuan quantities of painkillers and ended up in a coma after an overdose. She checked into the Betty Ford Middle to earn clear but by early 1996 she had fallen off the wagon. In accordance with a 2011 Fresh York journal profile, one of her nipples tore after a breast implant ruptured, and the anguish of reconstructive surgical scheme resulted in her going abet on painkillers.
Around this time she used to be dropped by her company William Morris and she or he signed up for illustration with a minute Beverly Hills upright company. One amongst the companions used to be attorney Howard K. Stern, who would ingredient into Anna Nicole’s memoir and not utilizing a rupture in sight after.
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In October 2006, a federal financial disaster order in California sided with Smith, agreeing that Pierce had purposely tried to preserve her faraway from Marshall’s cash, and awarded her $449 million, plus $25 million in damages from Pierce; the amount used to be later diminished to about $88 million.
A trial in negate probate court docket in Texas, nevertheless, would soon result in Smith being awarded nothing. Since the financial disaster court docket used to be making an strive to teach its ruling over the negate court docket, Pierce appealed to the U.S. District Court docket in Los Angeles, which shrank the award to $88 million, in accordance with Marshall’s supposed promise to trail away Smith half of what he earned throughout the time they own been together.
No longer contented, Pierce took it to the ninth Circuit Court docket of Appeals.
The case would traipse on, but for the time being, Smith’s drug troubles and the media circus over these upright lawsuits had etched away at her glamour-lady negate.
She had a memorable characteristic as the deplorable guy’s seductive girlfriend in 1994’s Naked Gun 33 1/3 and starred as an ex-CIA agent in the 1995 B-thriller To the Limit, but that used to be the pause of her movie profession in the 1990s. She would no longer shoot every other film until Unlawful Aliens, which came out after she died at the age of 39 on Feb. 8, 2007, of an accidental overdose of prescription medications.
“She had this kind of magnetic persona, but it is doubtless you’ll possibly possibly possibly possibly discover that she used to be fragile,” Marciano urged Paper. “Success came and she or he purchased known by participants. She began taking sound asleep pills due to she could possibly possibly not sleep and mixing alcohol with them. I stopped working with her due to I could possibly possibly not kind out that. I acknowledged, ‘We’re performed.’ After that she met the unsuitable participants, and I feel that used to be it.”
Milan Ryba by task of ZUMA Wire
By the point she starred in The Anna Nicole Point to on E! in 2002, she had grew to turn into into a pop custom curiosity. The demonstrate only lasted for 14 episodes, but the scenes of a barely coherent Smith slurring her phrases, asserting some unintentionally hilarious stuff and attending to her day-to-day affairs sounding as if she used to be under water would linger. She soon grew to turn into known extra for her antics than for any straight-forward profession circulation.
On the G-Phoria Awards in 2004, her left sleeve failed her and her total breast popped out of her costume. Smith covered up with her hand but didn’t appear too concerned. Additionally that three hundred and sixty five days, she appeared in the video for Kanye West‘s “The Fresh Workout Conception,” which is why she memorably requested, “Admire my physique?” at the Billboard Song Awards earlier than haltingly introducing the “freaking genius” rapper.
In 2005, she entered a wet T-shirt contest at a membership known as the Freaky Tiki in Myrtle Seashore, S.C., and reportedly ended up in a screaming match with Birkhead, who used to be identified as her boyfriend. Experiences regarding the fracas ended up on Smith’s be pleased internet pages earlier than being taken down.
“The reason we took down the postings,” Stern later urged MSNBC.com’s The Scoop, “used to be that we make no longer need Anna defamed on her be pleased internet pages.” To space the document straight, he acknowledged, she used to be sporting pasties, she didn’t take, or set apart a question to, for pills, and she or he didn’t own a boyfriend.
“The most interesting thing that used to be appropriate is that I went there to set her due to she didn’t feel derive,” Stern added. “She met some factual participants in South Carolina and a few deplorable participants and I question their motives. I’m gay we purchased her out of there on time.”
Birkhead acknowledged on 20/20 that he and Smith own been positively an under-the-radar couple. “No person ever knew one time that I used to be her boyfriend,” he acknowledged. “The total time we dated, in the occasion you discover at all of the video, I’m in the abet carrying my digital camera derive…she didn’t need me in the highlight.”
The total whereas, Marshall vs. Marshall used to be mute raging. The U.S. Court docket of Appeals had agreed with Pierce, that Smith used to be entitled to nothing. Her upright team responded by taking their case to the U.S. Supreme Court docket, which agreed to hear it in 2006.
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Smith, having lost 69 pounds since turning into a face of TrimSpa, appeared at the listening to that February with Stern and Daniel at her aspect. The justices in the rupture dominated, 9-0, that Smith’s upright fight could possibly possibly continue—meaning her team could possibly possibly again soak up the plan back of her inheritance with a lower court docket.
E. Pierce Marshall died four months later and his companion vowed to soak up the fight in opposition to Anna Nicole ever getting a dime of J. Howard Marshall’s cash.
But because it grew to turn into out, Smith used to be moreover pregnant at that Supreme Court docket listening to.
She retreated to the Bahamas to provide delivery to daughter Dannielynn Hope on Sept. 7, 2006, at a Nassau clinic. Inexplicably, three days later, Daniel Smith died in his mom’s clinic bed, lying next to her. He used to be 19.
Dr. Cyril Wecht, a pathologist privately hired to set a 2d post-mortem on Daniel after the preliminary one used to be formally deemed inconclusive, urged Individuals that Daniel died of a deadly combination of methadone, Zoloft and Lexapro.
Smith used to be beyond devastated. And in her despondent negate, Stern and Birkhead own been placing out dueling statements claiming paternity of Smith’s little one lady.
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“Thru it all, even with all of the anguish, she has been a nice mom, a extraordinarily attentive mom,” Stern, who swapped vows in a dedication ceremony with Smith in the Bahamas but in no design legally married her, acknowledged on Larry King Dwell in the wake of Daniel’s loss of life.
“On the funeral, she tried to climb in the casket,” Birkhead urged 20/20. “I knew that Anna would be in no form on her be pleased after dropping Daniel, as shut as they own been, to take care of my daughter.”
When Smith died 5 months later, Paul Marciano acknowledged in an announcement, “In my idea, I feel she didn’t live on the shortcoming of her son Daniel, who used to be the admire of her lifestyles.”
Smith in no design denied that Stern used to be Dannielynn’s father, so it could possibly possibly possibly possibly be as much as DNA to teach it in a court docket of law as both he and Birkhead vied for custody of the little one in the wake of Anna Nicole’s loss of life. (Loads of various males, alongside with Zsa Zsa Gabor‘s husband Prince Frederic von Anhalt, came forward as doubtless fathers, too.)
There used to be moreover a dispute over the destiny of Smith’s physique, with Stern looking out to order on her final resting space, too, whereas Smith’s estranged mom, Virgie Arthur, desired to take her daughter’s physique dwelling to Texas. Stern obtained and Smith used to be buried next to Daniel in the Bahamas.
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Birkhead, clearly, grew to turn into out to be Dannielynn’s biological father and he has devoted his lifestyles since to elevating her as a single dad. (He urged ABC Data that Stern had been a supportive friend after paternity used to be confirmed.)
At 6, Dannielynn appeared in a Bet marketing campaign in honor of her mom. But varied than their annual journeys to the Kentucky Derby (Birkhead and Smith met whereas she used to be capturing her E! demonstrate at the Barnstable-Brown Gala that precedes the speed), her dad kept her out of the highlight.
Now that she’s 18 and appears extra admire her mom than ever, Dannielynn’s next step is legally as much as her.
In 2010, Stern and two of Smith’s ancient doctors went on trial for drug-linked charges, at the coronary heart of which used to be the question of whether the accused had illegally facilitated her with the prescribed medications that in the rupture introduced about her loss of life. Birkhead testified that Smith “would assert, ‘I’m in anguish. I’m no longer a drug addict.'”
Stern and psychiatrist Kristine Eroshevich own been both stumbled on responsible of conspiracy but a order threw all but a misdemeanor payment in opposition to Eroshevich out in 2011; he dominated that prosecutors hadn’t proved that she and Stern supposed to interrupt the law as soon as they obtained meds for Smith utilizing aliases.
An appellate court docket overturned the order’s resolution, but in 2015 the identical order brushed off the costs in opposition to Stern all over again.
“I blame him entirely for her loss of life,” Smith’s father, Donald Hogan, urged E! Data in April 2009, relating to Stern. “No person set apart a gun to her head, but someone certain introduced masses of apparatus dwelling and, in space of bringing medications to someone, although she had a match about it, I would teach her to teach someone else to earn it for you.” (Hogan died in September 2009. Virgie Arthur died in 2018.)
In 2011, Smith’s case in opposition to Pierce Marshall ended up abet in the U.S. Supreme Court docket’s palms again—only this time, they closed the e-book on the 20-three hundred and sixty five days saga, upholding 5-4 an appellate court docket’s resolution that the financial disaster court docket had no standing to fragment out that cash to Smith all those years ago. Which in 2011 intended that a nine-resolve windfall wasn’t in the playing cards for Smith’s only surviving heir, Dannielynn.
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Birkhead, noting that he didn’t take cash from Smith’s estate, but relatively supported his daughter with his work as a photographer and earnings from flipping properties, acknowledged on 20/20 in 2017 that he raised Dannielynn with the mantra that “excess shouldn’t be any longer always essentially the most interesting. Be careful who’s spherical you…be factual, be caring. Give abet. You make no longer need to be a well-known person to shoot for the stars.”
To set apart it merely, Birkhead desired to preserve essentially the most interesting phase of Anna Nicole’s legacy intact for his or her daughter and provide protection to Dannielynn as extra special as is humanly doubtless, no longer factual from a destiny such as her mom’s, but from the pitfalls of the unsuitable roughly media publicity.
Smith’s legacy, meanwhile, has clearly been better than that of a placing mannequin-actress-actuality-well-known person that died too young. Her memoir had so many stranger-than-fiction twists, it proved ripe for the retelling, be it by task of TV movies admire 2007’s The Anna Nicole Smith Narrative starring Willa Ford and 2013’s Anna Nicole on Lifetime with Agnes Brucker; the 2011 opera Anna Nicole; or the 2012 documentary Addicted to Fame, that contains annoying footage compiled throughout the making of Unlawful Aliens.
And in Might possibly well 2023, the Netflix documentary Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me did its most interesting to meet the subject posed in the film’s very title.
But for the upper phase of a decade there used to be an audience that had no belief what to preserve out with Smith when she used to be alive, that only sat abet and watched her decline, no longer sparkling what it used to be precisely that they own been staring at—and potentially figuring that nothing truly deplorable would happen in the pause.
But Smith’s memoir didn’t own a satisfied ending. As every other it remains a cautionary reminder that there’s always a proper person on the diverse aspect of that lens.
“The item about Anna used to be…it used to be virtually admire a prick up persona,” Birkhead acknowledged. “Because when the digital camera used to be going, she used to be a total varied thing…That used to be extra, to me, an act than it used to be the right kind person, who she used to be.”
(Originally printed on Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2017, at 5 a.m. PT.)
