Femme fatale Fannie Foxe

The truism "There's no fool like an old fool" was proved with laser-like clarity in 1974 in a remarkable incident involving the chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee and a D.C. stripper who danced as Fannie Fox, the Argentine Firecracker.

The woman in question was born in a community south of Buenos Aires and married a nightclub piano player named Eduardo Battistella, with whom she moved to the Untied States in 1965. The Battistellas were neighbors of Wilbur Mills and his wife Polly and sometimes played bridge together. Clearly, Wilbur wanted to play more than bridge (No wisecracks will be allowed here using the term "rubber.")

On the fateful night, Wilbur and Fannie had been observed dining and arguing loudly at a D.C. restaurant. Mrs. Mills was home nursing a broken foot.

Five hours later, in the wee small hours of the morning, U.S. Park Service officers on patrol near the Tidal Basin noticed a car without its headlights on and pulled it over. An upset woman, Fannie, jumped from the car and into the Tidal Basin. Inside sat a pickled Mills, bleeding from the nose and from facial scratches, the driver and another woman, who apparently was Fannie's cousin.

News of the episode got out, and at first Mills did what most white-collar rascals do: he denied everything, and in the most comical terms. Unlucky for him, a TV cameraman had caught the incident on videotape, and three days later, Mills 'fessed up--to some degree, at least.

Later, further details emerged about Mills, who had great clout in Congress, having been seen frequently with Fannie (divorced in 1973 and at the time mother of two teenage children) at a strip club, the Silver Slipper, where he lived it up and bought magnums of champagne for his chums. Sadly, Fannie apparently really loved the old fellow and, in an interview with Sally Quinn, called him "a young man in an old man's body." Ah, the indiscretions of youth...