| |
Anna
Nicole Smith: 'It's very expensive to be me'
Reuters
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HOUSTON:
Former Playboy Playmate Anna Nicole Smith acknowledged she
has expensive tastes but denied she married her late 90-year-old
husband only for his oil fortune.
"It's
very expensive to be me. It's terrible the things I have to
do to be me," Smith, 33, told jurors in a Houston probate
trial to determine who gets what from husband Howard Marshall
II's estimated $1.6 billion estate. Throughout the four-month
trial, lawyers representing the estate have portrayed Smith
as a gold digger who only married the elderly oilman for his
fortune. "They don't understand the age thing. They don't
understand it's a love thing," Smith said Monday. "I
never had the love this man gave me and I will never have
it again."
Though
adamant she truly loved her husband, Smith freely admitted
she blew through the $5,000-$10,000 cash Marshall sent her
via Federal Express each week. "I am serious. I pay a
lot of money to be me," Smith said, explaining she spent
her money on designer gowns and shoes so she could attend
weekly movie premieres. Smith and her 62-year-old stepson,
Pierce Marshall, have been locked in legal battle since the
elder Marshall died in August 1995, 14 months after marrying
the blonde pinup. She was 26 and he was 89 at the time.
A federal
bankruptcy judge in Los Angeles late last year finalized an
order giving Smith $475 million of her late husband's estate,
prompting the actress and former centerfold to pull out of
the Houston trial on Jan 5. Though Smith dropped her Texas
claims, the younger Marshall had already sued her for interfering
with his inheritance, which is how she ended up on the stand
Monday. Marshall attorney Rusty Hardin asked her: "Isn't
it true you didn't see your husband in the last month of his
life?"
"Pierce
stopped all of the money and that's why I couldn't be with
my husband when he died," Smith retorted, referring to
her stepson's freezing of cash payments to her. "I could
have saved him again and Pierce couldn't save him." Earlier,
Smith testified she loved her husband because he was the only
person who ever accepted her unconditionally. "He took
me out of a terrible place, took care of me. He was my savior,"
Smith said tearfully, clutching a silver-framed photo of Marshall
taken on their wedding day. "It wasn't a sexual 'baby,
oh baby, I love your body'-type love, it was a deep 'thank
you' for taking me out of this hole."
Asked
by Hardin if she ever talked to the photograph of her husband
which she has held throughout the trial, Smith said she did.
"What do you say to the picture?" Hardin asked.
"That's none of your business," Smith snapped. Smith
testified she rebuffed Marshall's marriage proposals for more
than two years because she wanted to make a name for herself
"so nobody could call me a gold digger, but I guess that
backfired didn't it?"
"How
much gold did you get over the next few years?" Hardin
queried. "Quite a bit, Rusty," Smith said. Earlier
testimony showed Smith got some $6 million in gifts, including
$700,000 in cash, cars, a house, clothes and jewelry. Hardin
also questioned Smith about her early career as a stripper,
which led to meeting Marshall and eventually becoming Playboy
Playmate of the Year. She described how strippers and a club
manager persuaded her she had what it took to dance topless.
"It
took them 30 minutes and couple of drinks to convince me,"
Smith said, saying she was humiliated when it was over. But
she looked in her lap and saw $50 and realized dancing paid
better than her previous jobs at a Wal-Mart and a Red Lobster
restaurant, she said. Smith, a native of Mexia, Texas, testified
she believed she gave her husband a reason to live after meeting
him and dancing for him for the first time at a Houston topless
club in 1992. "When you danced for him, he began to come
alive?" Hardin asked. "He sure didn't just sit there.
He grabbed onto my breast and got us into trouble," Smith
said.
TOP
|
Other
Stories...
 Britain
gives Spielberg honorary Knighthood
Sharing
music site Napster to charge users a fee
'Wedding
Planner' catches US box office bouquet
India's
``Ram'' revisits brutal period
Venus
set to make a big splash on small screen
Television
gets ready to prime the pump for Telebuzz
Action
stations in 2001 -- It's radio ga-ga once again
|
