Fanne Foxe dies at 84, gained notoriety in Wilbur Mills sex scandal

Fanne Foxe, the exotic dancer whose relationship with Rep. Wilbur Mills (D-Ark.) ended his career in the 1970s, died earlier this month at the age of 84, The Washington Post reported.

Foxe was born Annabel Villagra in Nueve de Julio, Argentina, immigrating to the U.S. in the mid-1960s. She met Mills, the powerful chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, in 1973. The two would regularly meet at Washington, D.C.’s Silver Slipper club, where Foxe performed as “the Argentine Firecracker.”

An affair between Foxe and the married Mills became public after Park Police pulled over a car carrying the two during a drunken argument in the early morning of Oct. 7, 1974. Foxe fled the scene by leaping into the Tidal Basin, and later changed her stage name to “the Tidal Basin Bombshell.”

Mills was reelected a month later, but the same month addressed reporters while seemingly intoxicated at a theater where Foxe was performing. He later conceded he was an alcoholic and did not run for reelection in 1976. Foxe, meanwhile, saw her act become increasingly in-demand and upped her fees substantially.

“Mr. Mills wanted me to stay home … to study and get a job,” she told the Post in the ’70s. “He wanted me to leave the whole [stripping] thing in the Tidal Basin. But my going back to work started the whole thing up again … not because of the publicity but because I promised him for the kids’ sake I wouldn’t go back to being a stripper.”

Foxe left dancing in 1974 after being arrested for a fully-nude act in Orlando, although she was later cleared of the charge. She married businessman Daniel Montgomery in 1980 and lived in the St. Petersburg, Fla., area at the time of her death. She earned her bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of South Florida in 1995 and two master’s degrees, in marine science and business administration, in the 2000s.