I first ran into Anna Nicole back in ’92 or so, when she OD’d at the Peninsula Hotel. I was assigned to do the story, and I rushed over to interview what turned out to be some of the most valuable sources I’ve ever had. I got great quotes about how the paramedics nearly dislocated their shoulders trying to hoist her onto the gurney (she was a big girl), how she had drank about 8 "Sex on the Beach" shots and then got onto the vodka&vicodin regimen when she got back to her room.
She then accused her boyfriend, Daniel Christopher Ross, of trying to kill her by trying to force the pills down her throat. I managed to get her on the phone from Midway Medical Center, where she muzzily denied that anything was wrong with her, until I started reading her direct quotes from the police report. "Naaawwhhh! Thas’ nah whah Ah said!" she slurred, and then started trying to tell me some disjointed story about people trying to kill her until someone grabbed the phone from her hands and slammed it down.
A year or so later, she dumped Ross, and he immediately called because he was trying to flog the tell-all story about his wild nights will Anna Nicole all over town. He was wired-up and jumpy, chainsmoking and claiming Anna Nicole and he used to smoke crack, that crack was the only thing that would keep her thin, and that she would let her son (who was then about 8) play with her boobs in the bathtub. He basically trashed her, and told lurid tales about her sex life and how she used to eat gi-normous breakfasts of biscuits&gravy, half a dozen eggs, sausage, pancakes, etc., all topped off with booze and pills.
About a year after that, a shift character who claimed his gang name was "Sweet Pea" and who claimed to be her bodyguard/boyfriend/chauffer called up to tell all. He had nude pictures of Anna Nicole performing various acts. He claimed that she had been pregnant with his baby, and that he had a picture of her in the shower, naked and fried out of her head, sitting down and talking to the baby in her swollen stomach. Sweet Pea said that he was talking because her drug use was getting out of hand, and he feared for his baby’s life. And he also wanted $25,000 for the photos and the videotapes of group sex.
Next was the whole J. Howard Marshall brigade – all the cretins and golddiggers trying to come up with ways to chisel off a chunk of his fortune from either him or her.
Next came the authors of the book "Big Beautiful Doll," who were the photographers who claimed to have discovered Anna Nicole back in the day, and who had written a tell-all book about what she was really like before she got famous, back when she was working the drive-thru chicken window in rural Texas.
Then came a number of parties back in ’99, when a friend and I ran into Anna. The host of the party offered to introduce me to Anna, saying that he thought that we would get along. By this time, I was taking a hiatus from the reporting biz (well, more or less), but curiosity compelled me to go over and sit next to her. During a rather contentious conversation with my friend Steve, she put on a fake-Brooklyn mob guy tough voice and said "Yeah, you gots big balls, huh?" And then she reached over and grabbed his crotch. She then proceeded to get hammered and started calling me "Johnathan." I tried to tell her my name, but she insisted on calling me Johnathan. Finally, a girlfriend of hers intervened, explaining "She just broke up with her boyfriend Johnathan, who looks just like you." So I figured I might as well play along. "All right, yes, I’m Johnathan," I said. "Why haven’t you called me back?" she pouted, and then stuck her hand down my pants. The woman had a grip like a blacksmith, and would not let go until I stood up and made my escape.
There was always weird energy around her.
Finally, Mark Stuplin of E! was assigned to produce her reality-TV show. About two weeks into the show, he called and moaned, "I’m producing a train wreck!" The show debuted with huge ratings and a weekly re-hash on KROQ here in L.A., where fake-morning DJ Laqueesha said things like "I just want to run up and kiss Anna Nicole all over her body! She is so damn stupid! This is the greatest TV show ever about brain-damaged people that I have ever seen!"
I think that it is only a matter of time before someone puts 2 and 2 together and figures out that, like Marilyn and the Kennedy brothers, Anna Nicole and the Bush brothers had something going on. How long until we get the conspiracy theorists to come out and say that Jeb had her iced so that she wouldn’t blow the whistle on her affairs with the two Bush boys?
Hi Dave!
Thanks for sharing your encounters with Smith here. I admit that it took me a minute to understand the last paragraph (“Oh! He’s being sarcastic. I get it!”) because yours is the only story or account that I’ve read or heard in recent days that hasn’t tried to imply or even outright state that there’s more to her death than just another fatal drug overdose.
I suppose, though, that in the end she has more in common with Monroe than even she could have imagined (and she imagined quite a few similarities between herself and Monroe) and that is that even in her death, the leeches are still trying to exploit her for another dollar. I think I may throw up if I hear one more talking head speak sweetly and sadly about her now, after years of mocking her. After years of making public her most embarassing and most heartbreaking private moments, the only sadness I’ll believe from them about her death is that they’ve lost an easy source of juicy celeb trash that could be used on days when those with bigger names didn’t provide and providing celeb stories might now require work, perhaps some creative story telling, or maybe even landing a celeb interview once in a while. Yeah, now that I think of it, they should be crying their fucking beady little eyes out.
On a more personal note, the news of her death seemed surreal to me because it was only a couple of days before that hearing on the tv news that she was being sued along with Trim Spa started me on a rant about her to a friend. I ranted on about how they’d included her in the suit against Trim Spa only to make sure the media took notice of the suit, that surely they didn’t think she had a fucking clue of what she was endorsing and that, like all of the idiots that they claim to protecting from false advertising, if Smith was told that Trim Spa made her lose weight and that the 300 calories and four hours of exercise daily only enhanced the snake oil’s magical powers, she’d most likely believed it. I went on about how I’d seen her reality tv show and like everyone else, I saw that she’s a selfish and mean person. But for crying out loud! She’s also a new mother as well as a mother mourning the death of her son. Hell, just losing a kid a couple of days after birthing another would be enough to do a lot of women in without the media there, too. Besides, if all selfish and mean people were tormented by the media, well there just wouldn’t be enough media to go around, now, would there?
Anyway, Dave, I appreciate your article here. Anna Nicole Smith was neither an angel nor a devil and you presented her as neither. In fact, the truth is that she wasn’t all that interesting anyway, no more than most people wasting their minds on drugs are.
CA
CA –
Thanks for the kind words – and for recognizing that the story was more than the simple black’n’white soap opera tale that the various TV outlets are foisting on the public.
Anna Nicole had almost no self-awareness, gliding/waddling through life blessedly unaware of how strange and ridiculous she looked when she was out of her face in front of TV cameras. And then all of a sudden, she’d say something so insightful you’d snap your head around and wonder if that could have come out of her.
I do have to disagree with you about her not being interesting though – she serves as a classic Hollywood cautionary tale, one that we’ve heard before and can sing along with, one that goes back to the silent movie days, and centers around what happens to gorgeous busty blondes who trust too much in this town… Anna Nicole’s life serves as proof that the only thing that we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.
Hey, Dave, it’s me again.
Reading my post again, I realize I didn’t come across as having much sympathy for Ms Smith. The truth is, however, that I feel a great deal of sympathy for her and her loving survivors (emphasis on the word “loving”). My intense anger and disgust was and is for the news media, the tabloids and tabloid tv programs especially, for the way that they’re cashing in on her death, and is not directed toward Smith. She was, as you stated, a victim of Hollywood and the media.
I will add that she was a woman, a living, breathing, flesh and bone human being, just as you and I are human beings. That last is obvious yet I can hardly tell that some are aware of her humanity in that she hasn’t been treated with even the smallest degree of dignity and respect that should be her birthright simply for being born human. I’ve no doubt that the media circus that arose from the almost simultaneous birth of her daughter and death of her son played a major role, if it wasn’t the direct cause, of her swift spiral from drug abuse to fatal drug overdose. That was the time that she needed most to be treated with the dignity and respect afforded to her as a human being, if for no other reason. In other words, she needed to be left alone by the media and the public (us!) to work through what had to be the most emotionally difficult time of her life.
As for her being interesting or insightful, I’ll just have to take your word for it. After all, all I knew of her was what the media presented to me. While living, she was presented as an object of lust when her weight met media approved standards and an object of disgust when heavier than that. And since her death, she’s presented as virtuous and someone to be mourned and missed (with only her “thin” photos and film clips being presented, of course). But I think that you and I can agree that she was all of those things and none of those things, that she was a human woman.
CA