[5] She was fascinated by the arts, and dreamt of becoming an actress, attended Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, and studied acting under Maude Adams, but her family would not allow it.

[4] Mitchell first came to national attention after she remarked to a television reporter that the Washington, D.C., peace demonstrations held in November 1969 reminded her husband of the Russian Revolution.

[1] Mitchell had the custom of having an evening drink and then calling reporters with political gossip or information she had gleaned while rifling through her husband's papers or eavesdropping on his conversations.

[16][note 1] By November 1970, a Gallup poll indicated that 76 percent of Americans recognized who she was, and she was featured on the cover of Time in an issue about the most influential women of Washington.

[17] Nixon selected John to head the Committee to Re-Elect the President (commonly abbreviated to CRP, or the pejorative "CREEP") for the 1972 campaign.

[18] A week before the June 1972 burglary of the DNC headquarters in the Watergate office building, the Mitchells had traveled to Newport Beach, California, to attend a series of fundraising events.

[19] While there, Mitchell's husband received a phone call about the incident and immediately held a press conference denying any CRP involvement.

[18][20] Despite these efforts, the following week, Mitchell acquired a copy of the Los Angeles Times,[16] learning that James W. McCord Jr., the security director of CRP and her daughter's bodyguard and driver, was among those arrested.

[18] Mitchell unsuccessfully made attempts to contact her husband by phone, eventually telling one of his aides that her next call would be to the press.

[18] In the first of many interviews, Mitchell related how in the week following the Watergate burglary, she had been held captive in that California hotel and it was King who had pulled the phone cord from the wall.

[19] In May 1973, she provided sworn testimony in a deposition at the offices of attorney Henry B. Rothblatt in connection with the Democratic Party's US$6.4 million civil suit against the CRP.

[29][3] On January 1, 1975, he was convicted of perjury, obstruction of justice and conspiracy for his involvement in the Watergate break-in; he served 19 months in a federal prison.

[25] It was not until February 1975 that McCord, having been convicted for his role in the Watergate burglary, admitted that Mitchell was, in his words, "basically kidnapped" and corroborated her story.

[25] Suffering the advanced stages of multiple myeloma, on May 31, 1976,[3] Mitchell slipped into a coma and died at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York City.

Despite John Mitchell's actions to keep crowds away, Pine Bluff residents, fans, and the press nonetheless lined the streets and area surrounding the cemetery.

[16] Despite her fame as an outsized personality, those who knew her said she was often anxious before attending parties or public events, clutching her friend's arm, trembling, or even weeping.

[5][32] She refused to curtsy to Queen Elizabeth II at a garden party in July 1971, saying, "I feel that an American citizen should not bow to foreign monarchs."

"[33] Myra MacPherson of The Washington Post wrote that "To many she was a brazen and bombastic woman, to others she was a heroine who attacked a liberal permissiveness they felt had brought chaos to the land.

"[32] The National Review said: Martha Mitchell brought to [the Nixon Administration] a welcome touch of zaniness and genuine good humor.

During the Watergate furor, her abortive TV career proved to be another and finally pitiable example of the capacity of the media to exploit and consume the vulnerable.

[17] Martha's role in the Watergate scandal was told in the 13th episode of the sixth season of Drunk History by John Early, where she was portrayed by Vanessa Bayer.

[38] Gaslit, a political thriller TV series based on the Slow Burn podcast, aired in 2022, with Julia Roberts portraying Martha and Sean Penn playing John Mitchell.

[39] The "Martha Mitchell effect", in which a psychiatrist mistakenly or willfully identifies a patient's true but extraordinary claims as delusions, was named after her.