The news that Hollywood is going to develop a movie about Wendy Davis, the hapless Texas state senator who is famous for a futile 11-hour filibuster against an anti-abortion bill and a doomed run for the governorship has raised eyebrows in Texas political circles. The fact that Sandra Bullock has been attached to play Davis has faces hitting palms. Of course, former Senator Davis is more popular in Hollywood than she ever was in the Lone Star State, but this sort of hagiography is just absurd. The title of the movie, “Let Her Speak,” is astonishing.

Davis is most famous because she would not shut up.

What about a movie about Ann Richards?

It is not as if Texas political history is not replete with women who actually succeeded in doing things. Ma Miriam Ferguson became the first woman governor of Texas in the 1920s after her husband, who was also the governor, was thrown out of office for corruption. Barbara Jordan was a civil rights icon and the first southern African American woman to be elected to the United States House of Representatives.

However, a significant movie could be made about Ann Richards, the tart-tongued politician who, unlike Wendy Davis, actually got elected governor of Texas. To be sure she ran against Clayton Williams who had the bad taste to make a rape joke and she was no great shakes as governor.

But what she lacked for ability, she more than made up for in eloquence.

The silver foot speech

Who can forget that speech Richards, then an obscure state treasurer, delivered before the 1988 Democratic National Convention when she made a devastating critique of then Vice President George H. W. Bush. “Poor George. He can’t help it.

He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.” The line brought the house down and is the only thing anyone remembers about that convention. To be sure, Bush 41 still won, running as he was against Michael Dukakis, a man who threw his own wife under the bus when pitched a softball question about the death penalty.

The one thing that would be really great about “Ann Richards: The Movie” is the supporting cast of characters.

They would include Richards’ good friend and political satirist, Molly Ivins. The political figures who clashed with Richards are a who’s who of Texas politics, including both George Bushes, Clayton Williams, Jim Mattox, who Richards beat in the primaries, and Lt. Governor Bob Bullock, who was so enraged at Richards that he became a supporter of her successor, George W. Bush.

What do you say, Hollywood? How about a biop of a Texas female politician who is at least entertaining?
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