Who You Calling a Bimbo?

By STEVE LOPEZ

He was 89 when they married in 1994, a billionaire Houston oilman who traveled by wheelchair. She was 26 and took her clothes off for a living.

Love, American-style.

One day last week, when former centerfold Anna Nicole Smith boom-boomed out of a Houston courtroom during a break in the latest blood feud over her dead husband's $1.6 billion oil fortune, a line of autograph hounds awaited her.

"Oh, you're stunning!" a woman blurted. The 5-ft. 11-in. Smith, 32, who modeled for Guess jeans and did a little acting that gave Meryl Streep no worries, just smiled. Nobody even noticed her two doddering stepsons, old enough to be her father, who are scheming for their own piece of daddy J. Howard Marshall's cash farm. A California bankruptcy judge already awarded Smith $449.7 million for 14 months of connubial bliss. This is Round 2.

"She's Hollywood, she's popular, she's interesting, and she looked terrific in Playboy," said a woman of 24. "I hope she gets the money." Two men in their 20s, neither of whom appeared to be a genius to begin with, were struck dumb at the sight of Smith. They waited with pen and paper, panting like Labradors.

With each passing day, end-of-the-world cults hold more appeal for me. I thought about throwing myself off the roof of the Harris County courthouse in despair over the direction of postmillennial American culture. But there are social considerations, peculiar to Texas, that make it difficult for an outsider to pass judgment here. Gold digging is a popular sport in Houston, says Ray Hill, a radio talk-show host. "There's a great tradition of marrying women off to rich men."

Though Smith grew up in Texas, it was apparent that NASA's rocket program was not in the cards. But she was clever enough to know her strengths. The night Marshall rolled into the nudie bar she was performing in and fell head over wheels in love, Smith hit a gusher.

"I say if she slept with the old coot, she deserves the money," Laura Phillips, 41 and single, said at a swanky downtown jazz club. Cathy Jamayo, 35 and also single, agreed. "If I were 89 and a 26-year-old guy wanted to sleep with me, I'd give him a billion dollars."

Three seventyish friends in the oil business were having lunch at the Petroleum Club one day when the Smith case came up in conversation. Gold digging is a hazard of success, they said. But that never stopped Marshall, said Gene Van Dyke, who owns millions of acres of drilling rights off the west coast of Africa. "I knew his previous mistress, 'Lady' Diane Baker. He met her in a titty bar too, and was madly in love. When you've got that kind of money, blowing $15 million or $20 million on some nimbo bimbo is nothing. His wife had Alzheimer's, and periodically she'd realize he was having an affair, but then she'd forget about it again."

When "Lady" passed on unexpectedly, followed by Marshall's wife, "he was devastated," Van Dyke said. Only after an extensive recovery program at the local strip joints did he regain his vigor. "I said, 'I heard you're in love again. Who is it?'" Van Dyke says. "He said, 'Go to the drugstore and pick up this month's Playboy.'"

These days the former Playmate wears ruby-red lipstick and four-inch heels to court, where two dozen attorneys scuttle and scat over the spoils. Although Smith's name wasn't in the old man's will, the California judge said she was entitled to spousal benefits anyway, and accused one brother of tampering with the will to keep the whole hill of beans for himself. A finding in her favor in Texas probate court, where she is arguing that the old man promised her half of everything in return for marrying him, could bolster her claim on the $449.7 million, which is sure to be appealed.

For all the talk of boobs, the two biggest ones in the courtroom might be the brothers, 63 and 61, who don't speak to each other. One alienated his father and got scratched out of the will, and the other could have bought off his brother and Smith for less than he will pay his lawyers. So call her a Texas bimbo if you like, but what would that make Governor George W. Bush? Smith has already made half a billion more in oil than he did, and she's still drilling.