Who knew Martha Mitchell, the wife of then US Attorney-General John Mitchell, was one of the most important figures of the Watergate scandal? Richard Nixon did. And now the world does, as streaming columnist NICK OVERALL reports. 

WHEN “All The President’s Men” exploded on to cinema screens in 1976 the effects of the Watergate scandal were still reverberating throughout politics.

Richard Nixon had resigned after being disgraced by the controversy. Senior US government officials were facing charges or being imprisoned. Faith in the democratic process had been cast into doubt.

Amidst the maelstrom, director Alan J Pakula had carefully crafted a film about the two “Washington Post” journalists who first revealed the scandal to the public.

“All The President’s Men” starred Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford as the two reporters who staked their careers, reputations and even their lives on exposing the break-in and bugging of Democratic National Committee Headquarters, a scheme that aimed to illegally obtain information from Nixon’s political opposition.

Using an entertainment medium, it was a film that made the intricacies of Watergate widely accessible to the public for the first time and marked the beginning of a cascade of books, podcasts, movies and television shows that have similarly tried to explore Watergate even now, 50 years after it first made news.

The newest example is “Gaslit”, an eight-part series streaming on Stan that tells the story of one of the most important figures of the scandal but whose story has not, until now, been given the recognition it deserves.

That person is Martha Mitchell, the wife of then US Attorney-General John Mitchell. 

Films such as “All The President’s Men” made it widely known that John Mitchell was a key orchestrator of the break-in at the Democratic National Committee HQ. What they didn’t reveal was that his wife Martha was the one to bring him undone. 

From eavesdropping on phone calls, listening to backdoor conversations, and rifling through her husband’s papers, Martha became one of the key Watergate whistleblowers. She not only sounded the alarm on her husband, but the entire Nixon administration despite a crushing amount of pressure on her to keep it zipped.

In attempting to reveal the truth she was abandoned by most of her family and labeled as crazy.

In fact, so terribly manipulated was Martha that her name was eventually built into a term for being manipulated. “The Martha Mitchell Effect” is used to describe a situation where a psychologist falsely diagnoses a patient as delusional.

One can easily see where the title “Gaslit” comes from for this new series about Martha.

Julia Roberts plays Mitchell in a performance that could sweep the awards season. She’s joined by an A-list cast playing the officials who did all they could to shut down her attempts to bring Watergate into the spotlight, however unsuccessful they were.

Nixon himself is quoted as saying that “if it hadn’t been for Martha Mitchell, there’d have been no Watergate”.

He let that confession slip among others in his controversial interviews with British TV host David Frost in 1977, interviews that became some of the most watched in the history of television.

Nixon had agreed to Frost’s questioning in a desperate attempt to try to salvage his deteriorating image, thinking that Frost, made famous by comedy and light entertainment television, would make for an easy interviewer.

But the TV host gave Nixon more of an intellectual boxing match than he’d bargained for, famously cornering the disgraced former head of state into admitting “if the president does it it’s not illegal”.

The 2008 Ron Howard film “Frost/Nixon” offers a compelling account of these interviews and can be streamed on Binge.

It’s adapted from a popular play and stars Michael Sheen and Frank Langella as the respective interviewer and former president and who put on performances that are incredible to watch.

“Frost/Nixon”, “Gaslit”, “All The President’s Men”, it is intriguing that the allure of Watergate continues half a century after the scandal first happened. Why is this the case?

Perhaps the event so vividly drawing back the curtain on how malleable political systems can be is why it has cast such a long shadow.

Watergate may be the most prescient reminder of the eye that must be kept on modern government.

The “-gate” suffix that sits on the end of the title of almost any scandal actually comes from the name of the office building that was broken into that night in 1972 – the “Watergate Complex”.

Will Smith’s Oscars “Slapgate”? You can thank Richard Nixon for that one.