REVENGE of the Mouth

Martha Mitchell was Washington's most outspoken character. Now she's going Hollywood.

- MARK PEIKERT

Martha Mitchell, seen here in 1973, is the subject of a new Netflix documentary and a Starz series starring Julia Roberts as the Watergate whistleblower. Below: Julia Roberts as Martha Mitchell, with Sean Penn as John Mitchell, in Gaslit.

During her time, Martha Mitchell was inescapable. The Arkansas-born wife of John Mitchell, Richard Nixon's attorney general, was an invaluable source for gossip columnists, a guest star on Laugh-In, and the cover star of a 1970 issue of Time devoted to the women of Washington, DC. But her true place in history is weightier than pop culture ubiquity. "If it hadn't been for Martha, Richard Nixon told David Frost in 1977, "there'd have been no Watergate?"