In 1974, a stripper known as the “Tidal Basin Bombshell” took down the most powerful man in Washington
The career of Congressman Wilbur Mills ended that night
In 1974, Congressman Wilbur Mills, an Arkansas Democrat, was arguably the most powerful politician in the country. As chairman of the Ways and Means committee, Mills held “near-absolute sway over any legislation with fiscal consequences,” which is to say a lot of legislation. “I never vote against God, motherhood or Wilbur Mills,” a House colleague once told a reporter. Mills, who had been a congressman for 36 years, was being discussed as both a presidential candidate and a potential Supreme Court justice.
Until the stripper incident.
On a mild fall night, his career ended with a literal splash. At 2 a.m. on October 9, the congressman’s swerving limousine was pulled over by park police near Washington’s Downtown Mall. Annabel Battistella a.k.a Fanne Foxe, a.k.a the Argentine Firecracker, a 38-year-old exotic dancer, bolted from the car, ran down the road yelling in alternating English and Spanish, and leapt into the Tidal Basin in front of the Jefferson Memorial. “My long, expensive evening dress lapped around my legs, but I felt nothing,” she would later write. Park police fished her out and handcuffed her when she tried to do it again.
The congressman was found inside the car with three other friends, and with inexplicable scratches all over his face. No charges were filed and the park police climbed into Mills’s limousine and drove the group home. (Full disclosure: The author’s father was an intern for Wilbur Mills in the summer of 1976.)
At first, Mills’s aides denied that Mills was present at the scene, then he attributed these denials to miscommunication. Mrs. Battistella and her husband (who was not present) were “close friends,” he said, and he was merely trying to give her a ride home after she became too intoxicated. As for the swerving, speeding vehicle, Mills explained that the friend who was driving “was unfamiliar with my car and among other things in the glare of the lighted streets neglected to turn on the headlamps.” He apologized to his constituents and his wife of 40 years, his childhood sweetheart Polly, whom Rolling Stone would later describe as “a pleasant gray-haired woman.” Of his wife’s absence from the scene, Mills said she was “blaming herself for not accompanying us that night even with her broken foot.” Mills then thanked the park police “for the courtesies extended to me and my friends.”
For many, the bawdy scene didn’t mesh with what they knew of the distinguished congressman. Born in Kensett, Arkansas (pop. 905), Mills, who was once described as looking like “Lyndon Johnson in miniature,” was known for his excessive caution, fastidiousness about legislative details, and his moderation. If he burned the midnight oil, it was not because he was cavorting with strippers — but because he was known to spend his evenings studying the ins and outs of the tax code. He had been living in the same modest apartment near the National Zoo for the last quarter century with Polly. A fiscal conservative, Mills is often blamed for capping the expansion of Medicare. He refused to invest in the stock market, out of concern that it might create conflicts of interest, and was rumored to only invest in diamonds. His interests included baseball, “light reading,” and “light music.” When he was in the newspapers, it was only to discuss tax law, foreign trade tariffs, military spending, and social security.
Mills was unerringly punctual and expected the same reliability from others. In a possibly apocryphal tale, when then-president Lyndon B. Johnson arrived ten minutes late to the airport to discuss a budget issue related to the Vietnam War, Mills had ordered his pilot to take off and was already in the air.
After the Tidal Basin incident, the public grasped for explanations. Mills was taking medication for back pain after a surgery the year before. Perhaps the drugs had muddled his thinking. Maybe he was tired of his chairmanship, some suggested. Mills’s own explanation: “I drank booze, and I mixed the drinks with some highly addictive drugs.” Maybe it was some combination of all of the above, along with the fact that sometimes, people do logic-defying, out-of-character, potentially life-ruining things because they want to have sex. It wouldn’t have been the first or last time that monkey-business had torpedoed the career of a presidential hopeful.
The vote for his congressional seat was a month later. Mills won, but not long after, he did something that is very difficult to understand. He made a public appearance at a Boston burlesque theater where Foxe was performing. “I’d like you to meet somebody,” Foxe told the audience at the end of her act. Then she turned to the wings and called, “Mr. Mills, Mr. Mills! Where are you?” Mills strode onto the stage. They exchanged a few words, she kissed him on the cheek, and he went back the way he came. Not long after, he resigned from his chairmanship on the Ways and Means committee and joined Alcoholics Anonymous.
In the months after the incident, Polly Mills performed the degrading political-wife ritual known as a “display of unity.” She sat front row at his events, looking on “demurely” as reporters at press tables nearby gaped at nude photographs of Foxe that were running in the dailies.
If the dip in the Tidal Basin ruined Wilbur Mills’ career, it made Fanne Foxe’s. She rebranded her strip tease. Goodbye “Argentine Firecracker,” hello, “The Tidal Basin Bombshell.” The next year, she published a tell-all memoir, The Stripper and the Congressman. In her account, Mills had gotten her pregnant, and had it not been for the Tidal Basin incident, she and the congressman probably would have married. His burlesque stage appearance was not a cockamamie publicity stunt. The lovelorn congressman had been standing in the wings because he wanted to see her, and she had called him out onto the stage to save face when he accidentally revealed himself to the audience.
“Congressman Mills knew I was writing the book,” Foxe, told a reporter. “What may shock him is the fact that I put almost everything into it.” After that, she returned to Argentina, and was never heard from again.
Mills went on to become an advocate for addiction awareness, raising funds for treatment centers, and counseling other alcoholics. In 1982, he told the Senate Finance subcommittee on health, “I thought it was a failure on my part. It’s a disease from which you can recover and gain back your position in life.” He and Polly Mills remained married until his death in 1992. In the years after the incident, if you were to walk into the Mills home and open the liquor cabinet, you would find books, not booze, inside.
