Arkansas Blog

good for u of a. good for katv. we are all lucky it did not end up in the landfill. only wish it could stay in central arkansas.

Forget all that boring history stuff.

Who's the cute chick, and how did she come to be photographed with who was then one of the leading male sex symbols (power being an aphrodisiac) in the U.S.?

Yes, kudos to Sen. Pryor and others. I remember when KARK put theirs in the landfill a few years ago. What about KTHV?

My goodness, Silverback, it must be a generational thing. The cute chick with Wilbur Mills in the photo is the infamous Fanne Foxe, the Argentine Firecracker they called her. Annabelle Battistella on her birth certificate. About 35 years ago she was the equivalent of the Argentine gal that the South Carolina governor sniffed after recently. They were both Argentines, but the newer one was a TV reporter. Wilbur's babe took off her clothes for a living. She was a stripper.

She was only a stripper at The Silver Slipper
But she had her Ways and Means.

Most headlines dubbed her the "Argentine Bombshell" after that night when she jumped from Wilbur's limo and plunged into the fountain. One of the best things that ever happened to Richard Nixon. Relief from the headlines. It was what an angry nation needed. Of course it gave fodder to a Billy Graham sermon or two.

"Mills was involved in a traffic incident in Washington, DC at 2 a.m. on October 9, 1974. His car was stopped by U.S. Park Police late at night because the driver had not turned on the lights. Mills was intoxicated, and his face was cut from a scuffle with Annabelle Battistella, better known as Fanne Foxe, a stripper from Argentina. When police approached the car, Foxe leapt from the car and jumped into the nearby Tidal Basin in an attempt to escape. She was taken to St. Elizabeth's Mental Hospital for treatment.

Despite the scandal, Mills was re-elected to Congress in November 1974 in a heavily Democratic year with nearly 60% of the vote, defeating Republican Judy Petty. On November 30, 1974, Mills, seemingly drunk, was accompanied by Fanne Foxe's husband onstage at The Pilgrim Theatre in Boston, a burlesque house where Foxe was performing. He held a press conference from Foxe's dressing room. Soon after this second public incident, Mills stepped down from his chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee, acknowledged his alcoholism, joined Alcoholics Anonymous, and checked himself into Palm Beach Institute at West Palm Beach. He did not seek re-election in 1976, devoted his time to counseling individual alcoholics, and raising funds for alcoholic treatment centers, including one founded in his honor at Searcy, Arkansas, the Wilbur D. Mills Treatment Center for Alcohol and Drugs. He also became affiliated as of counsel with Washington office of the New York political powerhouse law firm Shea & Gould. He was succeeded by Jim Guy Tucker."
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You guys have to understand that the climate, zingiest was mucho different. And too the long ranging effects of Roe v. Wade had not set in. We had not become a Theocracy at that time. Wilbur was admired in many circles not for his specialized tax legislation, but for his sexual acumen at his age.
Of course if you had known wife Polly you could understand why Wilbur had wandering ways.

In the mid 70s most bumper stickers in Fayetteville read "The Moral Majority is Neither."

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