10 Outlandish Details Surrounding Anna Nicole Smith, Who Married An 89-Year-Old Oil Tycoon In A Multi-Million Dollar Scandal

6 /10 Old Money

Anna divorced her husband Billy and, just a year later, married Marshall in Houston.

At this point, she was a successful model and had earned the high honor of “Playmate of the Month” from Playboy Magazine, a title reserved for the most beautiful girls featured in an all-girl all-exposed revue.

This further drove her success as a rising industry model, but the press insinuated the same thing.

For the next year, she was hounded by accusations that she only married Marshall for his money. She denied it every time. He died 13 months later.

5 /10 The Will Of One

Anna was not included in the official will of her late husband. She claimed she was entitled to half of his estate, which was worth nearly $1.6 billion in 1995, as part of their spoken vows and promises from their marriage.

Marshall’s stepson E. Pierce Marshall disputed it, even after Anna enlisted the help of her husband’s disowned son Howard Marshall The Third, who was more than twice her age, to back her up.

4 /10 Public Jury

Anna was lambasted constantly over her adopted image of being a “gold digger,” a woman who only dated or involved herself with men that had money.

The court cases went on so long that she was forced into bankruptcy from her lack of work and a lawsuit that was posed against her, which she reached a default settlement on.

It took until September of 2000 for a Los Angeles court to award her nearly half a billion dollars, and two years later, for a federal court to nullify it and reduced her winnings to $88 million.

3 /10 Back And Forth

It was appealed again and again by either party, reaching well past Anna’s prime. In that time, she had starred in movies (primarily terrible) and became a cultural icon of ridicule and mockery.

She was once one of the sexiest women alive, and that held up physically for a while, but she kept slipping more and more in a nasty public way.

She also developed an addiction to prescription drugs to treat her borderline personality disorder.

2 /10 Live Fast

The case made its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, where then-President George W. Bush selected a member of his administration to work on Anna’s behalf.

The court unanimously favored Smith in the probate matters, giving her the right to pursue her estate share after it had been rejected battling against E. Pierce.

A year later, E. Pierce died at 67, but the court battles carried on through his widow.

1 /10 Die Young

Anna Nicole Smith died in 2007 of a drug overdose in her home in the Bahamas.

She was 39 years old but lived long enough to accomplish more than some people had to wait 80 years to do. Unfortunately, the legacy she left behind was one of loss and shame.

She had a daughter a year before she died who is still represented as a minor in the ongoing battles to seek Anna Nicole Smith’s high-profile celebrity marriage compensation.