The patron saint of every trailer park in America, Anna Nicole Smith, is dead! She was 39. The details surrounding her unexpected death in a South Florida hotel may yet turn into another scandalous chapter in her eventful and somewhat tragic life.

Born in a small Texas town as Vickie Lynn Hogan in 1967, she was abandoned by her father and shuffled between her mother and her aunt. She got married at 17, and became a mother at the same time. It was an inauspicious start to life by any standards.

But as luck would have it, good fortune seemed to smile upon Smith in the early 90’s. Despite her torrid beginnings she was able to ascended to the dizzying height (or pitiful low depending on your moral outlook) of a Playboy magazine cover girl on no less than four occasions. Photographed in a classic pinup style that harked back to the era of Marilyn Monroe, Bridgette Bardot, and Anita Ekberg, Smith became the magazines ‘Playmate of the year’ in 1993.

A year later, she married a man 63 years older than her. He was J. Howard Marshall, an 89 year old billionaire oil tycoon in ill health. Smith insisted the marriage was about true love and that there was simply no question of money being a motive. 14 months later Marshall died (presumably with a smile on his face) leaving Anna Nicole with a huge share in his fortune.

She became one of America’s most notorious ‘blonde bombs’ and seemed unable to shake off the reputation of being a dim “white trash” gold-digger. Indeed she sued New York magazine for five million dollars plus punitive damages after they used a picture of her eating a bag of chips in an article entitled “White trash nation.” However, that legal altercatation was nothing against the intense battle she had with her former stepson, E. Pierce Marshall, over the her dead husbands finacial legacy.

Smith lost that battle in 2001 and declared herself bankrupt shortly thereafter. But the drama didn’t end there. After much legal wrangling the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a previous courts decision and allowed her to once more pursue a fortune after alleged misconduct in the trial with her stepson. A month later he died at age 67.

In that time it’s fair to say that Smith became a lardy loud mouth drunk with a talent for making people feel embarrassed for her as she staggered around like a fat blonde bum in a sassy dress that was made for someone much thinner. Her value as a celebrity crashed, and burned horribly.

But as often happens in the fickle heartless world of showbiz, Smith returned to the limelight once more after losing the weight that had helped drag her down. She started a lingerie line and promoted various other products. But despite getting back into shape she remained a somewhat tragicly controversial figure often attracting scorn and ridicule.

After announcing last year that she was pregnant both her attorney and her ex-boyfriend claimed the child was theirs. Three days after the birth of her daughter, Dannielynn, Smith’s 20 year old son, Daniel, collapsed and died while visiting his newborn sister in hospital. An autopsy revealed that he had a cocktail of drugs in his system, evidence perhaps of a troubled life which sadly seems unsurprising.

Though it’s unlikely that Smith’s story will capture the imagination as much as that of the iconic figure of Marilyn Monroe, whom she idolised, it’s hard not to draw comparrisons between them.

Anna Nicole Smith’s death brings to an end what I suspect was not the happiest of lives. But I somehow, even though she’s gone now, I feel that there’s probably still a little drama left in her story yet.

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[Video] Anne Nicole Smith drunk as a bum in a dress
[Video] Anna-Nicole announces she is pregnant
[Video] A sort of tribute
[Video] Just about the strangest video I’ve ver seen!
[Video] Scratch that – This is the strangest video I’ve ever seen!
[Video] Anna Nicole Smiths cringingly hideous TrimSpa TV commercial
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