Anna Nicole Smith And J. Howard Marshall — And The Fight Over His Fortune
Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty ImagesAnna Nicole Smith in 1993, after being named Playboy’s Playmate of the Year.
In October 1991, billionaire J. Howard Marshall’s driver suggested that they visit a strip club called Gigi’s in Houston, Texas. The driver knew that the 86-year-old Marshall had been depressed; his wife of 30 years had just passed away after a battle with Alzheimer’s, and Marshall’s long-term mistress had also unexpectedly died after she underwent a face-lift procedure.
Since Marshall’s staff worried he was suicidal, the driver suggested they try to find “a new young lady.” And they did. That day, Marshall met 23-year-old Vickie Lynn Hogan — who would later be known as Anna Nicole Smith.
The two hit it off, and Marshall told Smith the next day: “Don’t go to work, my Lady Love. You don’t have to ever go back to work.”
X (Formerly Twitter)The marriage of J. Howard Marshall and Anna Nicole Smith shocked the nation.
Marshall showered Smith with gifts like a red Mercedes convertible, and he was reportedly filled with pride as Smith’s modeling career started to take off. After Smith posed for a Playboy scout around the same time that she met Marshall, the magazine picked her for its March 1992 cover and its May 1992 centerfold. In 1993, Smith became the Playboy Playmate of the Year.
A year later — after turning him down several times to focus on her career — Smith became Marshall’s third wife. They wed on June 27, 1994, a scandalous event that quickly became a national punchline. PEOPLE magazine, for example, quipped that “the bride wore cleavage.”
When Marshall died the next year at the age of 90, a battle over his fortune erupted between Smith and Marshall’s son, E. Pierce Marshall. In the end, neither triumphed. E. Pierce Marshall died in 2006 of “a brief and extremely aggressive” infection, and Smith died in 2007 of an accidental overdose.
