A Tribute to Anna Nicole Smith. No Seriously! Some things you may not know:

[HamdenRice]

Anna Nicole Smith (aka Vicki Lynn Hogan aka Vicki Lynn Marshall) was often portrayed in the media as a gold digger and a buffoon. In particular, her probate lawsuit to gain a share of the estate of her late husband, J. Howard Marshall, was portrayed as an attempt by an undeserving, "white trash" stripper to get unearned riches. Certainly in her later years it was obvious that she had some sort of substance abuse problem and seemed to exhibit her bizarre behavior for gain in a grotesque form of self-exploitation.

But the story of Anna Nicole, and especially her relationship with Howard Marshall and her pursuit of his estate, was much more complicated than the media portrayed it. In fact, in light of the Supreme Court's decision in her case, Anna was a woman who was ravaged by a legal system that was blatantly classist and sexist. Fortunately, the opinion in her bankruptcy court proceeding -- the one that seemed to award her hundreds of millions of dollars -- explains her story and is well worth the read, because it sets the record straight about her. Here are a few things that you may not know.

When Anna met the elderly Howard, he seemed to be on death's doorstep. The love of his life had died just two months earlier (more on this in a bit) and some people close to him felt that the elderly billionaire had given up on life. In fact, his driver brought him to the topless club where Anna worked in a desperate attempt to cheer the old man up.

Howard was smitten with Ann and his relationship with her seemed to give him a new lease on life.

You might think that this was the case of a stripper shamelessly manipulating an old man who was naive to the charms of an exotic dancer. Nothing could be further from the truth. Howard had had a prior twenty year long relationship with a stripper named Jewel DiAnne "Lady" Walker, while he was married to Bettye Bohannon Marshall. Both Lady Walker and Bettye died within a relatively short time of each other, but Howard lamented to friends that the death of Lady Walker was the saddest day of his life. It was Lady Walker who had died just two months before Howard met Anna. I guess we can just conclude that Howard Marshall had a sexual preference for exotic dancers. Howard would live several years and arguably his love for Anna contributed to his new desire to live.

You might also think that Anna, upon finding this doddering old man infatuated with her and determined to marry her, decided to do so in order to become wealthy through no effort of her own. In fact, Anna refused to marry Howard until she had made it on her own. She pulled herself up out of the stripper business, first by becoming a Playboy model and finally by becoming the world famous, world wide model for Guess Jeans. Only after she had become successful in her own right did she agree to marry Howard.

At Howard's death, Anna brought suit in Texas for a share of Howard's estate as his surviving spouse and on the basis of certain oral promises that Howard had made to provide her with certain large sums of money as gifts and support. It certainly raised eyebrows when this widow claimed that her deceased husband had made oral promises of money transfers that he mysteriously did not carry out. What the public did not learn, however, was that Howard was an anti-tax fanatic. When he was involved with Lady Walker, he had made substantial gifts to her, and the IRS had discovered these gifts and imposed very substantial estate and gift taxes on those transfers. An enraged Howard had vowed to somehow transfer money to Anna without paying these gift taxes. Part of that strategy was being married to her and part was delaying making other gifts until he figured out a proper tax strategy.

Moreover, Howard's son Pierce initiated a ruthless strategy of preventing Howard from making these transfers. According to the California bankruptcy court, Pierce engaged in forgery, destruction of documents and other sanctionable actions in order to prevent Howard from transferring his wealth to Anna. Anna, who was barely literate and numerate, was up against a battery of ruthless lawyers hired by Pierce not just to protect his interests but to engage in a criminal conspiracy.

Finally, you might also be surprised if reminded that Texas is a community property state, in which Anna was entitled to half of all income and property that Howard accumulated during the marriage. While the year or so marriage might not seem like a long time to us, a year's interest and dividends on a fortune of over a billion dollars meant that Anna was entitled to many millions of dollars as a matter of course. Her treatment by the Texas probate court was inexplicably, savagely classist and sexist, essentially allowing Pierce to deny her the rights of a surviving spouse.

Anna got her revenge (temporarily) in a California bankruptcy court, which, you may be aware, awarded her hundreds of millions of dollars. What you might not know is that Anna did not really go after her deceased husband's estate; she was protecting herself from a predatory and vengeful Pierce. Pierce wanting not just to beat her in court but crush her, sued her for libel, winning a judgment against her that she obviously could not pay. In her counterclaim she argued that Pierce "tortiously interfered with her inheritance," an actionable claim. The bankruptcy court issued a remarkable opinion agreeing that Pierce's actions were deplorable and quite likely criminal. Its opinion also gave her several hundred million dollars in damages representing the money she should have inherited.

It then did something that was supposed to help her, but that was her undoing. The court said that the damages were payable out of her ongoing Texas probate proceedings if she won there, or if she didn't, out of Pierce's inheritance of his father's estate. The California court was saying, "you win either way," which made Anna's lawyers quite lax about the Texas proceeding. Although somewhat obscure, it seems that Anna lost the Texas proceeding simply because her side stopped filing papers because they had a guaranteed win in California.

Then the California case was overturned -- first reduced by the district court, then overturned and vacated by the circuit court, on one of the most obscure doctrines in federal jurisdiction. Her Texas case was lost and her California bankruptcy guarantee rug had been pulled out from under her and she was once again penniless. That kind of roller coaster ride could make lots of people turn to drugs and alcohol. Eventually, however, the US Supreme Court agreed unanimously that the circuit court was wrong, but it was in the intervening years that Anna became the spectacle we knew from the Anna Nicole show.

It's difficult for DUers to have sympathy for someone who was, even momentarily, likely to inherit tens of millions of dollars of someone else's money. But DUers also tend to take the sides of people who are oppressed by greedy, powerful, rich and ruthless people.

Anna Nicole Smith was a barely literate, barely numerate woman from a poor background who was opposed by one of the richest men in the country, carrying out a legally brutal, ruthless and corrupt campaign, and she was subjected to ridicule and vituperation because of her class background. Her story was distorted and she was caricatured by what we have all come to recognize is a lazy, lying, brain dead mainstream corporate media -- in this case, with the glee of upper classes looking down on a working class woman thrown into circumstances she could barely understand.

I for one am sad to see her gone. I wish she had completed her makeover and had recovered from her addictions or mental problems. I am sure that the death of her son was a nearly insurmountable tragedy for a mentally fragile person.

I would have liked to have seen Anna eventually win her court case. Because the best and hardest way to hurt greedy, rich criminals is to take their money.