Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me: The most shocking moments from Netflix’s haunting new doco

[ad_1]

As Netflix’s sombre new documentary Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me reminds us, the small town Texas girl who became a sudden superstar was “adored by millions, but loved by few”.

Her career as a model and film star was eventually overshadowed by a life lived out in the tabloids (and the courts) and touched by more than her fair share of tragedies, before she died of a drug overdose in early 2007 – at the age of just 39.

But while Ursula Macfarlane’s (Untouchable) enlightening primer to Smith’s trials and tribulations attempts to give us a fuller picture of the woman born Vickie Lynn Hogan, it’s hamstrung both by only having historic footage to give her perspective and a late revelation that she may have been less-than-entirely-accurate about many aspects of her childhood and home life.

However, after viewing the two-hour doco as soon as it dropped on Netflix, Stuff to Watch has come up with a list of the most significant – and shocking – moments from Macfarlane’s investigation.

READ MORE:
* Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie: An endlessly inventive, entertaining, enlightening, emotional look at an incurable optimist
* Fatal Attractions: The 20th Century’s biggest R-Rated blockbusters (and where you can watch them right now)
* Larry Birkhead honors ‘one of a kind’ Anna Nicole Smith on 15th anniversary of her death
* The weird, wild and tragically short life of Anna Nicole Smith

She always loved being the centre of attention

Both her mother Virgie and Uncle George Beall detail how young “Vickie” craved being in the spotlight.

But the latter also reveals how they started having problems with her sneaking out at night when, as a teenager, she became infatuated with a 29-year-old man. “I had to nail her windows shut,” Beall says.

Anna Nicole Smith’s career as a model and film star was eventually overshadowed by a life lived out in the tabloids (and the courts) and touched by more than her fair share of tragedies.

Supplied

Anna Nicole Smith’s career as a model and film star was eventually overshadowed by a life lived out in the tabloids (and the courts) and touched by more than her fair share of tragedies.

She honed her skills at a Houston strip club

“She couldn’t dance. She reminded me of an Emu trying to fly,” friend and stripper Melissa Byrum (known in the documentary as Missy) admits of first seeing “Nicky” (as the then “Vickie” wanted to be known as) ply her trade.

However, she also says she “didn’t need a lot of help attracting men” or “manipulating people” and “had an incredible work ethic”. “She was convinced the only thing holding her back were her [then small] boobs,” adds her co-worker, who goes onto describe her as “a very good lover” with “an insatiable appetite” who it was “easy to be intimate with”.

Her love for J. Howard Marshall seemed genuine

As has been well-documented, it was at the strip club that “Nicky” met billionaire J. Howard Marshall in 1991. But while the near 63-year age gap caused many to consider her simply a gold-digger, Missy says she was impressed by how much they “loved”, “protected” and “got” each other (Macfarlane provides further audio evidence in the form of sweet phone exchanges between the pair).

However, Missy later says there was a point, before his death in 1995, where Smith changed and appeared to start “treating him like an ATM”, even maxing out his credit cards.

Anna Nicole Smith with Playboy founder Hugh Hefner.

Supplied

Anna Nicole Smith with Playboy founder Hugh Hefner.

Her Playboy audition didn’t start well

Playboy photo editor Marilyn Grabowski admits her staff thought she was crazy when she was considering 24-year-old Vickie Smith for a cover feature on debutants. “But I thought she had a wonderful aura and wasn’t trying too hard. She was a sweet girl with an incredible face.”

Grabowski recalls though, that when she entered the studio ready to shoot, Smith had covered herself in a sheet and looked truly terrified. “Fortunately she brought a record with her, Marilyn Monroe singing Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend. We put that on and, all of a sudden, she changed into a different person.

A subsequent contract to replace Claudia Schiffer as the face (and body) of Guess Jeans saw an even bigger transformation, as that’s when she started calling herself Anna Nicole Smith. Although, as Missy recalls, her audition again got off to a rocky start, after she couldn’t find a hair tie. She improvised by using a thong.

She almost starred in one of 1994’s biggest movies

After making her screen debut in the Coen Brothers’ under-rated screwball comedy The Hudsucker Proxy, offers for more movie work started flowing in.

A scene in You Don’t Know Me sees Anna Nicole discussing her dilemma of choosing between The Naked Gun 33 ⅓ and The Mask. “I’ve had the script for months, but I hadn’t read it until last week,” she says of the latter. “It’s got Jim Carrey in it – the funny guy. I love the script, but they’ve offered me – this is embarrassing – only US$50,000 for a lead part. I think it would show more of my acting ability though.”

In the end, economics won the day, and she passed on playing Tina Carlyle – and Cameron Diaz became a movie star.

Rotten Tomatoes Classic Trailers

Anna Nicole Smith and not Cameron Diaz could have played The Mask’s Tina Carlyle.

She was so excited to meet her birth father but…

Estranged from Donald Hogan for more than two decades, Anna Nicole tracked him down using a private investigator and invited him and her half-brother Donnie out to California to meet her. Capturing their emotional airport reunion on camera, she took the pair to both Disneyland and the Playboy Mansion.

But, as Donnie reveals in the documentary, he was keen to warn his half-sibling that Donald was not the father figure she wanted – or needed. “My father is not a type of guy you want to be alone with or feel safe [with]. You’re not gonna feel safe. I mean, he’s a monster,” he says to the camera, revealing that when he was 16 his father told him he had raped his wife’s sister.

When asked by Macfarlane if he was aware of an allegation that Donald had tried to have sex with Anna Nicole during that weekend they were all together, Donnie says “that would be like him”, but that it was “unlikely because I was there every step of the way”, before rethinking his testimony and admitting that he “wasn’t actually there all the time”.

Her infamous American Music Awards appearance was all an act

Long-time bodyguard Maurice “Big Moe” Brighthaupt says Anna Nicole told him before she went onstage to introduce Kanye West at the 2004 American Music Awards that she was “going to do something everyone will always remember”.

Cue an awkward minute of slurred speech and lines like “do you like my body?” and “And if I ever record an album I want this guy to make my..make me beautiful dueeetssss” that had viewers concerned as to her physical and mental health.

However, Brighthaupt says off-stage she was perfectly lucid, later telling him the stunt got her “so many other speaking engagements”.

“I didn’t even have to do a sex tape. I should flub a line more often.”

As might have been her entire story about a troubled childhood

After Missy reveals that Anna Nicole had always believed she was going to die young, she delivers the jaw-dropper that she’s convinced her friend misappropriated her own abusive childhood.

“Her mother was a sweet, loving person. And, if she had not been in law enforcement, we would’ve been in prison a couple of times,” Missy says of the pair’s youthful misadventures. We then cut to an interview with Virgie where she refutes Anna Nicole’s assertions that they were poor, before she says she once confronted her daughter about her public untruths.

“She told me, ‘I make more money telling sad stories than telling good stories’.”

And when Virgie asked her to think of the hurt she was causing her family with these tales, she says she got an abrupt reply: “Mom, this is my life – not your life.”

[ad_2]

Leave a Comment