Women Whose Lives Would Make Great TV: Victoria Woodhull

In honor of Women’s History Month, we’re publishing a series of features about women in history whose lives we think would make for amazing television. Read more in the series here.

In 1872, the Equal Rights Party nominated Victoria Woodhull for President, with abolitionist Frederick Douglass as her running mate, but her radical views and personal scandal proved too difficult to overcome.

Wouldn’t that be a terrific opening for a television series about the first woman to run for President of the United States?

When Victoria Woodhull died in 1927 at the ripe old age of 88, she had been married three times, divorced twice, birthed two children, alongside her sister, Tennessee Claflin, was the first woman to operate a brokerage firm on Wall Street, and was among the first women (also with her sister) to found a newspaper in the United States, Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly, which began publication in 1870.

An activist for women’s rights and labor reforms, Victoria was also an advocate of “free love.” Specifically, that a woman should have the right to control her own body and the freedom to marry, divorce, and bear children without government interference.

When she ran for President, women didn’t even have the right to vote in the United States. That came nearly 50 years later, when the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920. But nowhere did the law prohibit a woman from running for President. As you can imagine, the campaign was an uphill battle. Victoria had trouble funding her campaign, to the point that she and her family were homeless for a time. She was not taken seriously by other candidates and  faced a deluge of personal attacks undermining her character.

She spent Election Day 1872 in jail on an obscenity charge, but I’m guessing she would say her arrest was worth it. Reverend Henry Ward Beecher lead the smear campaign against Victoria, mocking her ‘free love’ ideas and preaching about her personal and love life.

Victoria was infuriated when she discovered that Beecher had been engaging in affairs with married women from his own congregation. Angry, she fought back, and published a front-page expose in her newspaper Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly about Beecher’s affairs, calling him a hypocrite. However, under the Comstock Act, Victoria was arrested for publishing ’obscene’ writings and sending them in the mail (because she included the word “virginity”).

All of that material is just from her Presidential campaign! We haven’t even touched on her impoverished childhood, her first marriage at age 14, her first career as a magnetic healer, her second marriage, her time as a stockbroker and newspaper woman, and so much more. 

This has “prestige project” written all over it, so I would pitch it to HBO or Amazon, studios I think would be able to provide the necessary budget and attract the caliber of talent needed to do justice to Victoria (and her sister, Tennessee). But guess what? When I went out looking for inspiration on who to cast in my fantasy project, I discovered that Amazon already has a movie in development, starring Brie Larson (yes to that casting!), and producer Susan Blech has a television series in development which she envisions as “a historical drama akin to The Crown and Mercy Street.” 

Great minds and all that! Learn more about Victoria here, here, and here.