Martha Beall Mitchell

Only on datalounge would someone start a thread on an obscure z list (if that) celebrity from over 40 years ago.

It's why I love datalounge!

She was very outspoken. The rumor at the time of her death was that someone deliberately injected her with cancer cells because she was talking too much about her husband and Nixon. And allegedly threatened to tell more.

I am not, fat whore @ R1

It's wierd, this is the second Martha thread I've seen here in as many days. She was regarded as both a reliable source and a hot mess. She used to drunk dial reporters and talk talk talk about her husband and the Nixon crowd. She was kind of awesome.

She was no Judy Agnew.

There were people who tried to discredit her, even some journalists. I think generally the public, especially those who were literate, tended to think she was telling the truth, and it turned out she was.

she was mostly depicted as a hot mess, but could be they just wanted to discredit/silence her. her drunken calls to reporters helped blow up the whole scandal

R5 I knew Judy a little bit who was very sweet, kind. Her husband and my father were in the same clubs together. He already had an unsavory reputation long before he become vice president. I remember when he had won Baltimore County Executive back in '66. My parents had a party for them at our house. Luck me got to pick up all of the goddamn cigarette butts that were all over the bag yard the following day.

Anyway, I digress. My recollection about MARTHA was that yes, she was a 'character' who was considered a loose cannon. Of course everyone watched her, hoping like hell that she was going to let loose with a whooper. Her husband seemed embarrassed by her. Pity. She was fun to watch. the kind of gal who most on here would've liked to watch.

Hot mess- which she was, like her husband who was a hot mess criminal.

She saved this country.

She was no Babe Paley.

I remember her being referred to as "Moutha" for her outspoken antics.

I have a Scavullo coffee-table book, and it has a beautiful (no kidding!) photo of her. Scavullo and Way Bandy really worked their magic on her!

She was the only positive aspect of Watergate.

Madeline Kahn's portrayal of her was, like everything Madeline Kahn did, priceless.

lol, she "saved" the country. from nixon? so we can have trump? compared to the current con man fuck up, nixon was pericles

She was a hot mess but very entertaining.

Nixon was a criminal who abused his office and the trust that had been placed in him. In some ways the country has never recovered from the damage he did and we probably won't in my lifetime.

Fuckface von Clownstick has a ways to go before he can match Tricky Dick's illegal bombing and genocide in Cambodia, abuse of power, obstruction of justice and so on. I'm not saying Fuckface couldn't get there, just that he's not anywhere near there yet.

Are there any disgruntled wives in the current administration that we should start taking out for fun & boozy brunches?

[quote]Are there any disgruntled wives in the current administration that we should start taking out for fun & boozy brunches?

Mrs. Paul Ryan

Heidi Cruz

Mary Pat Christie

Heidi Cruz is the one most likely to do a Trump dump.

Remember, Trump threatened Cruz during the primaries that he'd "spill the beans on your wife."

And he insulted Heidi's looks.

Dial her up for a boozy brunch, girls.

What ever happened to that other blonde Watergate icon-wife-- Mo Dean?

In the first years of the Nixon administration before Watergate broke, Martha Mitchell was already a common subject of news reports. She was basically a colorful booster for the administration. She said a few things a little out of school, but mainly she was considered a brash Nixon supporter. In those early years her outspoken opinions were seen as hurting Nixon only because they were too unvarnished for the wife of a cabinet member, especially the wife of the Attorney General, to be making. I have vague memories about her saying a few things about racial and social issues that caused brief brouhahas. Some of these were said on camera and some where said in night time phone calls to Helen Thomas of the UPI. Once Watergate broke, she didn't say much at first until her marriage fell apart and they divorced in 1973. It was in this time period that she claimed to have been kidnapped and drugged, etc. It was also during this time that she humorously said, "You can't have a water gate without a mill house." I think that was actually before her claims of being kidnapped.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Give the guy a break R17. He's only been in office for less than 3 months but he's already halfway to match nixons record. I guarantee you the Dump will surpass Nixon by the end of the year, if not earlier.

The Mouth of the South

They were going to make a movie a few years back about the women of Watergate called "Dirty Tricks" that was going to center on Martha Mitchell. The cast they had assembled was amazing:

Martha Mitchell: Meryl Streep

Pat Nixon: Jill Clayburgh

Mo Dean: Gwyneth Paltrow (a real lookalike)

Helen Thomas: Annette Bening (!!!)

For some reason it fell through and now it will never happen, since Clayburgh died.

Give me more questions gurl

Did you catch that picture of you in Newsweek last week, Dick? You were standing in a crowd on Fifth Avenue, and you were looking straight ahead, and everyone else was looking the other way like you'd just farted or something. (laughs) It said: "Who Remembers Dick Nixon?" I was screaming. It was so funny!

Someone should do a movie about her and cast Amy Sedaris. In OP's pic Mitchell just looks like her.

It reminds me we've had Attorneys General worse than Jeff Sessions and survived.

One of the things I remember about Martha Mitchell is that she reportedly made those phone calls from an upstairs bathroom at their Watergate apartment. It sounded so glamorous, as most of the apartments there were one level.

I hear she was a pedohoney

The movie concept described at R29 sounds like it would have been a blast—like an adult version of [italic]Dick.[/italic] Is there no other actress who could make a good Pat Nixon? Frances McDormand, maybe?

Never heard of her. Of course I was a small child during Watergate. I looked her up to see what she's doing to today and, sadly, she died in 1976.

Joan Allen could reprise her Pat Nixon. She's not too old. Where is Joan Allen anyway?

[quote] The rumor at the time of her death was that someone deliberately injected her with cancer cells because she was talking too much about her husband and Nixon

The rumor at the time of her death? No. It's what Martha Mitchell squawked to anyone who would listen. Nobody believed her. If there was a way to give someone cancer by injecting them with cancer cells, people like Trump would be dead.

She was so out of control that her husband hired an FBI guy to keep her off the phone (she was always calling reporters ). She managed to get on the phone anyway and the FBI guy pulled the phone cord out of the wall. Her husband then had basically kidnapped by a bunch of men in order to have her forcibly sedated by a psychiatrist. She later claimed that the injection he gave her had cancer cells in it. She died of cancer at 57. Weirdly enough, the actress who played her in “Nixon” died of cancer at the same age)

Just because you’re crazy doesn’t mean they aren’t after you. And just because they’re after you doesn’t mean you’re not crazy.

Martha Mitchell was hardly an obscure z list (if that) celebrity.

After Nixon, she made herself one of the most famous names in Washington, D.C. And that was the problem the Administration faced.

hot mess, trump hair

Tracy Ullman would have added Martha Mitchell to her repertoire if Martha was around today.

She should never be forgotten.

Retro hot mess

We had colorful characters back in the Watergate era. Rose Mary Woods, ice queen Mo Dean, Deep Throat.

Now we get Sean Spicer, Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Wilbur Mills, Fanny Fox

Growing up in DC, my impression was mostly what other posters have remembered. Then a couple years ago I happened on all these biographies of her from the time that were (unironically) adulatory. Mostly marketed to trailer trash that celebrated her as some kind of Southern archetype. The brassy, drunk kind.

eliazbeth ray

blaze starr

rita jenrette

ah, those were the days

Martha's hair in r40's clip is AMAZING.

Fawn Hall!

Here's one of those biographies

There is a podcast called Slow Burn about Watergate that is really good that I think a lot of DLers would like. There’s a whole episode on Martha. She sounds fab!

Photographers focused on her mouth, but I adore Martha for being a Republican hairhopper ...

Hot mess, and boy was she ever.

Hot mess, though no one said "hot mess" those days.

Hiiii........Patsy?

She guest-starred as a panelist on [italic]To Tell the Truth[/italic] before Watergate hit the fan.

One profile described her as a vibrant, attractive woman married to an ice-cold fish. She drank to cope with a miserable marriage.

[quote]The rumor at the time of her death was that someone deliberately injected her with cancer cells because she was talking too much about her husband and Nixon.

Would that even work???

Martha Mitchell meets Ernestine.

Hot mess, but a likeable hot mess.

Richard Nixon said in the Robert Frost interviews without Mitchell, there would've been no Watergate.

Obscure? Honey, Martha Mitchell is relevant today thanks to Trump.

Who do you think kidnapped her when she called Helen Thomas to tell her about the dirty damn deeds going on at Nixon’s reelection campaign? Why none other than Stephen King - Trump’s ambassador to the Czech Republic. No diplomatic experience. Totally obscure, just .. a Watergate figure who assaulted and kidnapped Martha Mitchell.

I'm surprised nobody has said "hot mess."

Why didn't she have her own talk show?

What were some of the important things she blurted out?

"eliazbeth ray

blaze starr

rita jenrette

Ah, those were the days"

What a batch of bimbos. All of them were involved in some kind of political scandal.

Considered a "dynamic young woman" in Washington, Rita Jenrette snagged freshman Democratic whip John Jenrette of South Carolina as a husband 18 months after meeting him. He was subsequently convicted of taking bribes during Abscam investigation in October 1980. She told authorities that she found a closet full of bribe money belonging to her corrupt hubby. She went on talk shows and did a nude Playboy spread. She said she and her randy hubby had fucked on the Capital steps during a break in an all night House session. The comedy troupe "The Capital Steps" derived its name from that incident. After she and Jenrette divorced she did several things, did some tv and movies, went into real estate. In 2009 she married some Italian nobleman and they live in his family home in Rome. I guess she did alright; she married a rich man and that's what women like her always hope to do.

Blaze Starr, a stripper, had a long term affair with a rather repulsive, crazy Louisiana governor named Earl Long (he was ridiculously played by Paul Newman in a movie based on their relationship). She also fucked John Kennedy, but who didn't? Supposedly he fucked her in a closet. She died at age 83 in 2015. I guess she'd lived quite a life.

Elizabeth Ray was the mistress of U.S. Rep. Wayne Hays. He put her on his payroll as a clerk-secretary, but she did no actual work except service him sexually. Ray later did the obligatory nude Playboy spread and tried to find work as an actress, but she had no talent and really wasn't even that good looking. Who knows where she is today.

And then there was Fanny Foxe. Foxe was a stripper who was the lover of the grotesque Wilbur Mills, then considered one of the most powerful members of the United States House of Representatives. They were out drinking near the waterfront in Washington when the police attempted to pull their vehicle over. Foxe attempted to flee by jumping into the Tidal Basin. The incident led to Mills' resignation two months later as Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. He was re-elected to his congressional seat in 1974, but he did not run for re-election in 1976. Foxe went on to do more stripping, but got into legal trouble for being too explicit during her act. She retired from stripping soon after that. She said she wanted to go to medical after giving up stripping but I don't think that ever happened.

Those were some of the bimbo scandals back in the day. They seem almost quaint now.

R66 Her husband had been Nixon’s Attorney General who resigned to become his campaign chairman. He was directly involved in the Watergate conspiracy. She became aware of this from overhearing his conversations with the “Plumbers”, Nixon’s gang of dirty tricks operatives. That’s what she later ratted out when she ultimately testifed before Congress.

Fanne Fox and Wilbur Mills in the Tidal Basin was the first political sex scandal I was aware of. I don't know that's because I was entering puberty and started to take an interest or if that sort of thing was previously hushed up for powerful politicians like Mills.

Grover Cleveland, dear.