Anna Nicole Smith: You Don't Know Me

I would just advise people just to follow their dreams.

You know?

They can come true.

I'm living proof.

This may say a lot

about our current culture of celebrity and media these days

when all the major cable news networks

switched over to non-stop, live coverage this afternoon,

when word arrived that Anna Nicole Smith had died.

She was 39 years old.

She was adored by millions but loved by few.

You look gorgeous, Anna.

You're the most beautiful woman in the world.

I love you all!

This small-town Texas girl is a sudden superstar.

A death that opened a Pandora's box of questions.

Smith is now worth an estimated $490 million.

Her story is one you just have to hear.

Anna, what are you hiding from?

I was being all sweet to you guys, and y'all screwed me over.

No.

Yeah, y'all did.

Just how did the sex goddess lose it all?

A life lived out in the tabloids

and touched by more than its fair share of tragedy.

Is there more to the story than we know?

What is the truth about Anna Nicole Smith?

I grew up in Mexia, Texas, a small town just outside of Houston.

Population 6,923.

Welcome to Mexia, Texas, my hometown.

Most people pronounce it Mex-ia, and it's not.

It's Mexia. M-E-X-I-A, by the way.

And I'm gonna show you through my hometown.

So if you'll come right this way with me. Come on!

This is Mexia High, home of the Blackcats, and this is where I went to school.

I wasn't very popular in high school.

Although I was flat-chested.

But now I have curves. See?

Ooh la la. Ooh! Oui, oui, oui.

Hi. It's me, Anna,

back at Krispy Fried Chicken, where I used to work for four years.

And I'm back, and I am bad.

And this is the house that I grew up in.

Tell me about your home life, your mom, your dad.

My home life with my mom and my stepfather, um…

Um, I switched around a lot and stayed with my aunt most of the time

because of my home life.

Um…

I'd really rather not talk about my home life.

This is where it all started.

Mexia's a small town. It's in the Bible Belt.

Young people, uh…

If you're high school kids,

there's very little entertainment for them.

I'm the uncle of Anna Nicole Smith by marriage.

She was always, uh, going out in the front yard

and practicing cheerleading,

waving at the boys driving by,

attracting attention.

And she always loved the attention.

You know, she… she craved attention.

Anna Nicole Smith's real name was Vickie Lynn,

and that's how I know her.

It was all about fun with her.

Vickie's, uh, four years older than I am.

She always made me laugh.

She always dressed up.

She wanted to put makeup on me. I wouldn't.

I said, "I don't do that kinda stuff."

She said, "Real men let women put makeup on 'em."

I said, "I don't think so."

Uh, as a family, me, Vickie, and Mom,

all of us went to church.

We… We were all God-fearing people.

She always wanted to be the center of attention.

And she enjoyed it. She loved being the center of attention.

We would go to the mall, and I swear to you,

there would be 50 men and boys walking behind us.

And she says, "Mom, look!" I said, "I know. I see 'em. Come on."

Vickie was always beautiful. She just… She was just born beautiful.

When she was a… a teenager,

that's when I started having problems with her.

Sneaking out of the house at night.

- -

Her mama, she sent her to our place.

They were having troubles with…

with this 29-year-old man that Vickie Lynn was infatuated with.

I had her windows nailed shut

so she couldn't get out the windows without me knowing about it.

She hated Mexia.

Ours was a life of deprivation.

Vickie Lynn quit school,

and she had a job at Jim's Krispy Fried Chicken,

and, uh, she was gonna support herself, and nobody was gonna tell her what to do.

You know, all the guys that came in there just wanted to take her out.

Billy was a cook.

She, uh, asked Billy one day to give her a ride home,

because she didn't have a car, and he said, "No."

And it just absolutely stunned her.

Who was he thinking he was?

So after that, she chased him 'til she got him.

She got him, and… and they got married right there in Mexia.

I got married when I was 17 years old.

I thought I was in love.

Oh gosh! He was so, so jealous of me.

And I couldn't go anywhere, nowhere.

And, uh, I was just locked in this house when he would go to work.

And I thought to myself, "I'm so lonely."

And I thought, "Well, if I have a baby, I'll never be lonely again."

So I flushed them pills down the toilet,

and I got pregnant.

I had my son, Daniel.

And then I'm not lonely, and I love him.

That's when I left, when my son was six months old.

She had big dreams.

There wasn't nothing for fame or what she wanted in her life

in Mexia, Texas.

But, uh, she couldn't see where all of this was going.

We miss her.

We miss her.

I want lots of money.

I want to buy me a whole bunch of land.

And I want to create my own house and build it.

The American dream belongs to you.

And build a nursery, because I wanna have another child.

I wanna have a little girl.

In Houston, there were, uh, strip clubs everywhere.

The oilfield had put them on the map,

because everyone had expense accounts, and money was flowing like crazy.

I ended up working at the Executive Suite.

The guys that would come in would put money in your G-string, you know?

Uh, they'd come in, they'd just put the dollars in there, whatever.

Now, on really good days, you'd have millionaires come in,

and give you $100 bills that make grass skirts.

That's the ones we liked.

If we didn't come home with $200, that was… it was terrible.

That was a bad day, you know?

There were days we made a lot of money in there. I mean…

Well, we made…

We made lot of money in there sometimes, so…

One day, we're… we're just doing our normal thing,

and, uh, in walks this gorgeous, gorgeous girl.

And everybody was looking at her.

You know, I hear a couple of the girls like, "My God, she's good-looking."

I know they're gonna eat her alive, so I volunteered to walk over,

and talk to her, and find out what her story is.

And she appeared to be very naive.

She said, "Oh my God. What… What is that?"

She was shaking. She wasn't sure if she could do that or not.

She did her audition, and of course, he hired her.

She couldn't dance. She looked like a--

She reminded me of an emu trying to fly.

It wasn't gonna happen.

You felt maternal towards her, almost.

You just wanted to take her under your wing

and protect her from everything.

She did tell me that she didn't like her name.

She said she didn't like Vickie.

She said, "I like Nicky better."

So I said, "Okay. If that's what you wanna be called, then I'll call you Nicky."

But no one needed to give her any pointers on how to attract a man.

She knew what she was doing.

And she doesn't need a lot of help manipulating anybody.

She's actually better at it than me.

Within a week or two, she was like a pro.

She had, uh, an incredible work ethic.

Her ultimate goal was to… to save up money,

and, you know, get the things she needed, and make a home for Daniel.

Right off the bat, she was making a lot of money.

It… It gives you a sense of empowerment.

And for a lot of girls

that come from the sort of background we came from, it's a big deal.