A Real Life Soap Opera (Part 1)

I’ve been hearing a lot about this woman, Anna Nicole Smith; in the news and on television. I knew she was a celebrity of some kind, but I didn’t really understand a whole lot about what was going on. I don’t usually pay much attention to this kind of stuff. Hell, I thought Jessica Simpson was one of Homer’s kids.

Apparently, Anna Nicole Smith had died and the body lay decomposing while her lover and her mother argued, in court, over where the body would be buried. Thinking this rather strange, I decided to peruse the web and find out a little about the case. Folks, this story is destined to become a “Movie of the Week”, maybe even a mini-series. And, it will have to be sold as a true story, because no one would buy it as fiction.

Anna Nicole was a high school dropout who got married at seventeen, had a kid and worked at a few odd jobs, at Wal-Mart, then as a waitress at Red Lobster, before buying herself a set of boobs and taking up exotic dancing. While she was dancing exotically, she was spotted by someone from Playboy who had her take off her clothes in the March 1992 issue of Playboy magazine. She was eventually named Playmate of the Year and started a whole new career as; you guessed it, a sex symbol.

One article I read claims Anna Nicole was responsible for the big bust trend. That is clearly untrue. Dorothy White started the big bust trend back in 1957. I still remember the day she caught me peeking down the front of her dress. She didn’t say anything. She was too busy trying to stifle her oncoming giggling fit. I was thirteen, she was twenty.

Now, where was I? Oh, yeah, the other girl with the big boobs.

Anna Nicole divorced her first husband in 1993, and in June of 1994 she married oil billionaire, J. Howard Marshall. Some say she married him for his money. Anna Nicole claims it was true love. She was 26; he was 89. Make up your own mind.

Also, in 1994, Anna Nicole sued New York magazine for five million dollars in damages to her reputation. The magazine had used her picture in an article titled, “White Trash Nation”. She claims she was told she was being photographed to “embody the all-American woman look.” Uh-huh. I wonder what Hefner told her?

Marshall died in August of 1995. He must have been one tough old bugger to last a whole year with that girl. Just looking at her in the flesh would cause cardiac arrest in more than a few men.

On his death, one of his sons tried to cut Anna Nicole out of the will. The son is now dead and Anna Nicole is dead, but Marshall’s estate, valued at 1.6 billion dollars has yet to be decided by the courts. A Texas probate Court decided Anna Nicole was entitled to nothing.

In 1996, Smith filed for bankruptcy in California as a result of a $850,000 judgment against her for sexual harassment of an employee. Uh-huh. Like this woman really had to resort to sexual harassment to get a man.

A Los Angeles bankruptcy judge awarded her roughly 450 million dollars from her late husband’s estate. But, in July 2001, a Houston judge affirmed the jury findings in the probate case, which ruled that she was entitled to nothing. In addition, he ordered Smith to pay over $1 million in fees and expenses to her stepson’s legal team. The conflict between the Texas probate court and the California bankruptcy court judgments forced the matter into federal court.

In March 2002, a federal judge issued a new ruling reducing her share of the estate to $88 million. In December 2004, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the March 2002 decision, once again leaving her with nothing.

The Bush administration subsequently directed the Solicitor General to intercede on Smith's behalf out of an interest to expand federal court jurisdiction over state probate disputes. In the Supreme Court's decision, handed down on May 1, 2006, the justices unanimously decided in favor of Smith. Although the decision did not give Smith a share of her husband's estate, it affirmed her right to pursue a share of it in federal court.

(To be continued)