OCTOBER 2022:
WHEN THE MAGNOLIA WINDS BLEW…
Julia Roberts shines as Martha Mitchell in Gaslit, when you watch the scenes with her, she is ever present and fun to watch as the flamboyant socialite wife of John N Mitchell, the attorney general of President Richard Nixon, and played by Sean Penn, whose presidency was cut short in his second term due to the Watergate scandal. When you watch Julia play Mitchell, you watch thinking that no one else could have encompassed the larger-than-life personality that Martha quite the way that Julia does, Roberts has quite the amount of range with the role as well, there are comedic sides of Martha that play out in her interactions with people and the southern charm she uses to attract the attention of everyone around her, but you also get to see the depth of range in the difficult scenes with Mitchell when she is held in California in a hotel room, as well as the dramatic build and deterioration of the Mitchell marriage, that at first is very loving and playful but over the course of eight episodes gets violent and cruel. Most of all Roberts carries Martha’s convictions when she goes against her husband’s wishes and testifies to Congress on what she knows about the events of Watergate. You may not be familiar with the role Martha Mitchell played in the Watergate scandal or even who she was to understand how well Julia Roberts played her in Gaslit, so let’s get to know the “Mouth of the South,” as Martha was known in Washington, D.C..
IT WAS A STEEL WIND FROM THE SOUTH…
Watergate is still regarded as one of the biggest political controversies of all time and is still considered a constitutional crisis for the nation almost fifty years after the break-in and burglary of the Democratic National Committee headquarters. Many decades later, one area of the Watergate scandal still continues to shock Americans. The story of Martha Mitchell, the socialite turned Watergate whistleblower who was also the wife of President Richard Nixon’s attorney general, John N. Mitchell, and the price she paid for attempting to talk to the press and leaking details about the scandal to the press. Martha was the conservative and flamboyant socialite from Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and her husband, John was the confidante and frequent golf partner of President Richard Nixon. But by 1970, Martha was the most famous woman in America. With her blonde bouffant hair and personality that could fill a room whole, Martha became so well known by 1970 when she graced the cover of LIFE Magazine in October and TIME Magazine in November, which reported that Mrs. Mitchell was often seen as a public embarrassment to the traditionalist Republicans and a figure for ridicule by the Liberal Democrats due to her lifetime habit of speaking her mind on the instant it comes to her and without a filter most times. In that same year, the New York Times called Martha “the most talked about, talkative woman in Washington.”
EAVESDROP, PREY, LOVE…
Martha Mitchell often would overshadow President Richard Nixon in popularity and be asked as a Republican speaker at events which surprised most conservative Republicans because Mitchell was seen as a loud, brash, outspoken woman and most White House Cabinet wives went unknown, they didn’t battle the president in popularity among the party. In addition to making the talk show rounds as her preferred method of talking, Martha was known for listening in on her husband’s phone calls and meetings, much to the dismay of John N. Mitchell and the Nixon administration. To make matters worse, she would often share sensitive information with reporters she would talk to on late-night calls. And it was believed that she was making the phone calls in an inebriated state due to a fondness for Whiskey.
MARTHA’S WATERGATE WEB…
Martha Mitchell’s petulance for eavesdropping on her husband and drunken phone calls to reporters may very well have contributed to the part role she played in Watergate since without her leaking the knowledge she had about the scandal and choosing to testify under oath to Congress the country may never have learned just how big the web that was Watergate was woven with corruption from the inside. On the weekend of June 17, 1972, her husband John was leading Nixon’s reelection committee and was attending a campaign event in Newport Beach, California where Martha accompanied him on the trip, John received a call alerting him that there was a burglary at the Watergate Apartment Office Complex and five men had been arrested for breaking-in to the Democratic National Committee headquarters located at the Watergate Complex. A break-in, for which some had asserted, that John N. Mitchell had authorized. John left for Washington immediately and Martha was left behind at the hotel and was reportedly under the watch of security aide and former FBI agent Stephen King. Martha got access to a newspaper and read the news while John was away and saw photos of one of the arrested burglars, James McCord. Martha was familiar with the former CIA officer and security consultant for the reelection campaign committee that her husband was leading, and she recognized McCord as her ex-personal security guard.
SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY…
Five days after the break-in and arrest of the five men, Martha called Helen Thomas who was a reporter at United Press International and would later write about the events in her book Front Row at the White House: My Life and Times, she wrote that Martha had declared an ultimatum for her husband over the call and told her that she would leave her husband John if he didn’t get out of the “dirty business” of politics. But Thomas also wrote in her book that before she could ask Martha to elaborate on what she had just said, she heard Martha saying “Get Away. Get Away,” and then the phone line had gone dead. When Thomas tried to call Martha back, she was told by someone else that Martha was “Indisposed.” Thomas wrote in her book that she became concerned and decided to call Martha’s husband John, who replied,
“That little sweetheart, I Lover her so much. She gets a little upset about politics, but she loves me, and I love her and that’s what counts.”
– John N. Mitchell, about his wife Martha’s concerning phone call with Helen Thomas
Thomas said that Martha alleged that King had ripped the phone out of the wall, thrown her onto the floor, and kicked her. She also wrote in her book that Martha was held hostage for days and, at one point, was held down by five men while a doctor injected her with a tranquilizer. And she wrote that Martha also told her she had to get stitches in her hand. Thomas wrote that when Martha returned to Washington she told Thomas,
“I’m black and blue. They don’t want me to talk.”
– Martha Mitchell
But this wouldn’t stop Martha Mitchell from talking. Martha recounted the horrid events to Thomas and other reporters and despite her speaking out, no charges were ever brought against King or others; and King has denied the kidnapping allegations to this day. Thomas wrote in her book that the story would get a fair amount of play in the press, but mostly in women’s magazines, and that maybe the editors of serious press papers just thought it was another case of Martha being Martha and newsworthy only because it had revealed a rift in a very public marriage.
A MIGHTY SOUTHERN WIND…
According to Thomas, right away back in Washington, administrative aides began hinting that Martha was hallucinating and that she was deranged or just drunk, all in an effort to disparage Martha. And due in part to the misogyny of the era, nothing came of Martha’s allegations, and she was written off. She would receive no activism from the feminists due to them being disdained by her, even though in her own way, Martha was a feminist hero for being a woman not bound by the conventional roles the Republican Party society assigned to her, and she was a woman who spoke her mind and was silenced for her truth. Despite what she alleged happened to her in California, Martha Mitchell believed her husband John was not involved in any wrongdoing and defended him during a civil suit against Nixon’s Committee to Re-elect the President.
Either way, John, who left Martha in 1973, was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury, and spent 19 months in prison. When asked about his verdict sentencing by reporters, John said,
“It could have been worse, they could have sentenced me to spend the rest of my life with Martha.”
– John N. Mitchell, on his sentencing verdict prison term
McCord who would later be convicted as a Watergate conspirator backed Martha’s story in a 1975 New York Times article where he said,
“Martha’s story is true—basically the woman was kidnapped”
– James McCord, on Martha Mitchell’s Newport Beach hotel accusations
and McCord stated all of this was in an effort to keep Martha unaware of Watergate.
THE MARTHA MITCHELL EFFECT…
President Richard Nixon would eventually resign from the presidency on August 8, 1974, and would later blame Martha for Watergate.
Nixon told British interviewer David Frost,
“I’m convinced if it hadn’t been for Martha – and God rest her soul because she in her heart was a good person. She just had a mental and emotional problem that nobody knew about. If it hadn’t been for Martha, there’d have been no Watergate.”
– Richard Nixon, Frost On America, April 1977
Martha Mitchell died of bone marrow cancer at the age of 57, just two years after Nixon resigned. Martha Mitchell was written out of the Watergate scandal story for most of the last half-century. Martha had gone to great effort to warn America what was about to be a national nightmare and overtake the country and she was ignored due to an era of misogyny, being the Watergate whistleblower, Martha was deserving of a much bigger role in the conversation when we tell the story of Watergate as a nation and her story was detailed in the Slate podcast Slow Burn, that was then adapted into the STARZ limited series, Gaslit.
MY WINDED REVIEW…
The eight-episode limited series starring Julia Roberts as Martha Mitchell is worth watching and was adapted amazingly well from the podcast story. Roberts does a great job of vindicating Martha in the eyes of an era, not of misogyny, and redeems her character and reputation in an outstanding performance by Julia Roberts. Sean Penn is absolutely unrecognizable as Martha’s husband and Nixon’s attorney general, John N. Mitchell, and the scenes that Roberts and Penn have together are powerful and character-driven to the max as you see the relationship deteriorate through their acting abilities in profound ways. If you’re looking for something to watch tonight and politics and the news have been reminding you of a past not forgotten, then turn off the news and watch Gaslit instead tonight! You will definitely be entertained and not disappointed!
All 8 episodes of Gaslit are available through you local cable provider ON DEMAND now on the STARZ channel or through the STARZ app.