The Fabric Of A Dream - A Film Australia National Interest Program

FILM AUSTRALIA PRESENTS The Fabric of a Dream - The Fletcher Jones Story

Writer/director Dennis K. Smith Producer Melanie Coombs Executive producer Penny Robins Narrated by Wendy Hughes Duration 52 minutes

A Film Australia National Interest Program in association with Melodrama Productions. Produced with the assistance of Film Victoria and in association with SBS Independent.

AN AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT-OWNED COMPANY, FILM AUSTRALIA IS A LEADING PRODUCER AND DISTRIBUTOR OF TELEVISION DOCUMENTARIES AND EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS. www.filmaust.com.au THE FABRIC OF A DREAM • A FILM AUSTRALIA NATIONAL INTEREST PROGRAM

Synopses

One line synopsis

The story of how a shellshocked war veteran took to the road as a hawker and ended up creating a national icon.

One paragraph synopsis

This is the story of how a shellshocked World War One veteran, who’d left school at 12, ended up creating a national icon. An inspiring man with bold and imaginative ideas, Fletcher Jones was influenced by Japanese reformer Toyohiko Kagawa, one of the most remarkable social activists of his time. Jones established his clothing design, retail and manufacturing business with an emphasis on quality, service and innovation. But his primary concern was for people - both his customers and his workers - and they, in turn, were intensely loyal. This is a celebration of the man and his dream - of a model working environment based on values other than simple profit - set against the backdrop of 20th century history.

One page synopsis

This is the story of how a shellshocked World War One veteran, who’d left school at 12, took to the road as a hawker and ended up creating a national icon.

The clothing design, retail and manufacturing business that he established in the small Victorian town of Warrnambool would, at its peak, encompass 55 stores around Australia and employ over 2750 people.

It was called Fletcher Jones & Staff, because the staff actually owned the company. Fletcher Jones set up the business as a worker’s co-operative, based on principles of fairness, decency and integrity. His emphasis was on value, quality, service and scientific innovation but his primary concern was for people - both his customers and his workers - and they, in turn, were intensely loyal.

2/11 THE FABRIC OF A DREAM • A FILM AUSTRALIA NATIONAL INTEREST PROGRAM

This documentary celebrates the life of an inspiring man with bold and imaginative ideas, whose entrepreneurial skills and marketing acumen became legendary.

It also looks at those who helped him achieve his dream, exploring his relationship with Japanese reformer Toyohiko Kagawa - one of the most remarkable social activists and thinkers of the early 20th century - and highlighting the vital contribution of migrant workers to the ragtrade.

It’s a story carried along on the tide of 20th century Australian history: the aftermath of war, the challenge of global capitalism, the impact of immigration and the rise and fall of modern industry.

About the film

For a generation of Australians, Fletcher Jones was a household name; the founder of one of the most successful clothing companies in the nation’s history.

But to his community and the thousands of people with whom he worked, Fletcher Jones was so much more than that. He was a visionary; an inspirational man who had a dream for his business that put the needs of his staff first. He was the genius behind an iconic Australian manufacturer and a gentleman who believed in sharing his success with everyone who helped to create it; a businessman who put people before profits and prospered. His company, Fletcher Jones and Staff, followed a groundbreaking business model and thrived.

The Fletcher Jones story is told in The Fabric of a Dream, a Film Australia documentary directed by Dennis K. Smith (Rainbow Bird and Monster Man, Troubled Minds - The Lithium Revolution) and produced by Melanie Coombs (Academy Award winning Producer, Harvie Krumpet). It was produced under Film Australia’s National Interest Program, in association with Melodrama Pictures.

“I am interested personally in social justice,” says director Dennis K. Smith. “In this documentary you’ve got the story of Fletcher Jones and you’ve also got the story of the people who worked alongside him to build an iconic company. He was a visionary man, he established an inspirational business model and his relationship with the workers was amazing. ”

Raised in a poor, working-class family, childhood was tough for young Fletcher Jones, whose stutter made him the butt of jokes by his peers. He witnessed great hardship among his father’s workmates, unionised labourers whose employment at the local mine often cost them their lives.

Despite leaving school at 12 and suffering debilitating shellshock after a catastrophic experience in World War I, Jones set himself up as a travelling salesman, hawking

4/11 THE FABRIC OF A DREAM • A FILM AUSTRALIA NATIONAL INTEREST PROGRAM aprons to housewives. He quickly learned that quality was the key to sales success and, with wife Rena, opened a small tailor shop in the rural town of Warrnambool in 1924. After an unpromising beginning, the little shop formed the foundation for a manufacturing and retailing empire that eventually employed 3000 people, each playing a role in the ownership and management of the company.

Inspired by a world-renowned Japanese Christian philosopher and social activist, Toyohiko Kagawa, Jones, himself a devout Christian, adopted the view that his company should operate as a workers’ co-operative. All staff, many of them migrants recruited straight off the docks, were given shares and a voice in the management of “Fletcher Jones and Staff”, as the company was known.

“The idea that it would be possible to have a company in Australia where you share the responsibility, the profits and the benefits with the workers was inspirational and revolutionary,” producer Melanie Coombs says. “What you have is young migrants coming off the boat and suddenly they are co-owners of the company. It’s an extraordinary thing.”

The dream eventually came to an end when the company was unable to match the industry’s growing reliance on technology and cheap imports.

After Fletcher Jones’s death in 1977, the company made efforts to modernise.

“We were making a pair of trousers in around about 110 minutes,” David Jones, son of Fletcher Jones and a former managing director of the company, recalls. “We gradually got that down to around about 32 minutes, but we were still paying a very high cost per minute compared to what you would pay in China. The Chinese could afford to make that very same trouser in 50 minutes and still end up with a much cheaper product.”

In 1991, after the company recorded massive losses, David Jones was voted out. The business was sold and all Fletcher Jones and Staff shareholders – the staff and the Jones family – lost their shares.

“It’s a microcosm story in that it tells the story of things that are happening in the steel industry and the car industry, it has happened right across the textile, clothing and footwear industries and it’s happening on farms. It is a story that is imminently transferable in the contemporary Australian historical and political context.” Smith says

“But the Fletcher Jones story is ennobled by his politics and where he came from as an individual. He was such a unique industrial philanthropist. His mentor was a Japanese Christian socialist, Kagawa, just before World War II. The information about Kagawa is amazing. He’s predominantly dropped out of western historical accounts, but he was the Gandhi of Japan; he was very influential.”

“I’d like audiences to look at this as an unexpected history that will take them on a journey. If they are enlightened and emotionally moved by this history then I would be quite happy. It’s a humanist history where I think if in some way the audience understand a small part of that Australian journey then we’ve done our job.”

As David Jones recalls: “Dad had this feeling that there was a great amount of injustice out there in the way in which workers were treated and, I have no doubt, a feeling that the world could be a better place than this if only he was given a chance.”

The 52-minute film uses recreations, historical news footage and home movies kept in archives by the Fletcher Jones Foundation to tell the tale of an extraordinary man, his achievements and his vision. It was developed over eighteen months and filmed over two months in Warrnambool and Melbourne.

Actor Andrew S. Gilbert plays Fletcher Jones the man in recreations that were filmed over 10 days in a hall in suburban Northcote and the Ktena Knitting Mills in Fitzroy, dressed by the art department to represent the period.

“A lot of attention and resources were put into making those recreations look authentic,” Coombs says. “Sometimes you can see recreations and they can really stick out. We really wanted it to add to the film, to give the audience more points of identification.”

Award-winning actor Wendy Hughes is the narrator.

About the filmmakers

Writer/Director: DENNIS K. SMITH

Dennis K. Smith is an award-winning independent filmmaker who has made seven documentaries for television, more than 50 commissioned films, several short films and has written two published histories. Dennis wrote and directed the documentary Rainbow Bird and Monster Man, which was nominated for four Australian Film Institute Awards and a Logie Award and won two AWGIE Awards, including the prestigious Gold AWGIE. Rainbow Bird was produced by John Lewis, photographed by Kevin Anderson and edited by Uri Mizrahi, the same team who made Troubled Minds. Trained at Swinburne Institute (now VCA), Dennis now lectures at Open Channel, RMIT and La Trobe University. He has been a script assessor for the Australian Film Commission and the NSW Film & Television Office and judged documentaries for the annual awards of both the Australian Writers’ Guild and the AFI.

Producer: MELANIE COOMBS

Melodrama Pictures' Melanie Coombs has produced award-winning shorts and documentaries including Harvie Krumpet. Written and animated by animator Adam Elliot, Harvie Krumpet won the 2003 Academy Award for Short Film - Animation among many international awards. A filmmaker for more than 10 years with qualifications from the University of Technology, Sydney, and the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, Melanie established her company, Melodrama Pictures, in 1999, and creates distinctive feature films, documentaries, drama and animation. Melanie was the executive producer of a half-hour documentary, Grandpa's Games, which screened on SBS in November 2003 and the short comedy In Your Dreams, which screened at Tropfest and Aspen Shortsfest 2005. In 2005, she produced the 52-minute drama The Glenmoore Job for SBS Television. The Glenmoore Job has screened at festivals around the world. Melanie is again working with an Adam Elliot, this time on an animated feature. Credits 7/11 THE FABRIC OF A DREAM • A FILM AUSTRALIA NATIONAL INTEREST PROGRAM

JAMES WRIGHT FILM AUSTRALIA Debt Collectors in association with ADAM FORD, PHIL DI-GIUSTO Melodrama Pictures presents Opera Singers PHILLIP CALCAGNO, MARCO THE FABRIC OF A DREAM CINQUE, CLAUDE FABRIS, BILL The Fletcher Jones Story PANTEL Cornet Player Director/writer: TIM HUMPHREY DENNIS K SMITH Coffin Carriers Producer: MERV FERRIS, MICHAEL CADILHAC, MELANIE COOMBS ROB DOUTHAT, RAMESH DOBBIN, Cinematographer: ADAM TRICARIO, MICHAEL KEVIN ANDERSON OHANIAN Production Designer: Female Shoppers NEIL ANGWIN ELISABETTA LOGOZZO, JULIE Editor: MCKAY BILL MURPHY, ASE Pensions Clerk Narrator: BOBBY BARKER WENDY HUGHES Returned Soldiers DARYL AVRAM, MATTHEW FENECH, Cast TIM HEARD, LEE BUTTSWORTH, DAVID WITT, ROD KELLY, RICK Fletcher Jones GOVIC ANDREW S GILBERT Work Room FJ Staff Charlie the Skitcher MAGGIE VENEZIANO, IRENE PRIEST, DON BRIDGES ANNIE ROSSINI, TRACY COLLINS, Young Fletcher JOSEPH VENEZIANO, DREW LINDO, BEN ROGERS JIM MISALE Rena Jones WW1 Re-enactors NATASHA SURAN GRAEME SAVIGE, ANDREW NOLTE, Toyohiko Kagawa DAVID MCGINNESS, PETER TAKAHITO MASUDA GILBERT, WAYNE MCALEICE, Tailor BARRY GILBERT

SONIA BEDNAR Marquee workers REECE EWINGTON, SCOTT Postproduction Assistant MIDDLETON, LAURA ROSO BRIDGET LLOYD-JONES Tailor 2 Production Accountant LOU VIRGATO MONIKA GEHRT Elegant Lady Camera Assistants MAREE SHEFFORD ANN AUCOTE, LAURENCE BALMER Man looking for fish Gaffer/Grip JUSTIN JAMIESON RICHARD TURTON Fletcher’s Father Best Boys MICHAEL GILDERS CRISPIAN HAYLER, JACK KENNEALLY Thanks to Interviewees Sound Recordists MARK TARPEY, GRAHAM WYSE PHILLIP ADAMS Art Director PROF RICHARD BLANDY TIM BURGIN JACK CAPLE Construction TED DIMMICK MOVIE ART PETER GARNER Costumes BILL HEWETT ROSE CHONG DAVID JONES Key Makeup/Hair RALPH JONES JOSE PEREZ LUIGI MAIORINO Car Wrangler LOIS ELLEN MEURS GEORGE NOVAC FREDERIK M.W. MEURS Horse & Cart GAETANO REMINE JOHN BAIRD, HORSE DRAWN CAB SILVIO SANELLI CO ERIC TONKIN Stills Photographer SUZY WOOD Production Manager Caterers LAVINIA RIACHI EDITABLE FOOD, ROCKET Production Co-ordinator CATERING Location Manager

HAMISH MCCLEOD

Traffic Control Research Warrnambool FILCON AMARA SHARP, PAUL VENZO, Unit Manager JENNIFER VENZO LINDSAY MARTIN Additional research, recording and Editor’s assistant performance REBECCA MCPHERSON SARAH SUTHERLAND, CAROLYN Post-Production Facilities COURT AND BART BEE DIGITAL PICTURES, ANGELINA MILARDOVIC, ANNA PHELPS, Archival materials courtesy of DIANNE JANES Colourist THE FLETCHER JONES JUSTIN HEITMAN FOUNDATION Sound Design & Mix WWW.THEFJFOUNDATION.COM.AU SOUNDWAVES, ANDREW MCGRATH THE GENERAL COMMISSION ON Sound Editor ARCHIVES AND HISTORY OF THE FRANK LIPSON UNITED METHODIST CHURCH Foley MADISON, NEW JERSEY, U. S. ERIN MCKIMM NATIONAL FILM AND SOUND Narration consultant ARCHIVE BILL GARNER FILM AUSTRALIA Composers AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING MADELINE FLYNN AND TIM CORPORATION, ABC HUMPHREY CONTENT SALES Film music consultant THE SEVEN NETWORK AUSTRALIA DALE CORNELIUS, SCORE Casting IMAGES COURTESY OF MUSEUM BROOKE HOWDEN, CHAMELEON VICTORIA, JENNY LYNDON & CASTING RICHARD BENCE - PUPPETSFULL Transcriptions PTY LTD, AMY YOUNG, GAETANO ANNE MARIE ALLAN REMINE, PAUL VENZO, ALAN COLEMAN TCF POLICY GROUP, AND PETER GARNER.

NESSUN DORMA BY LUCCINNI/ADAM/SIMONI BMG RICORDI MUSICA PUBLISHING SPA, USED BY KIND PERMISSION OF BMG MUSIC PUBLISHING

Film Australia Production Unit

Production Affairs Manager MARTIEN COUCKE Production Assistant GENEVIEVE DERWENT Production Accountant RACHELLE BAKARICH Executive Producer’s Assistant CARMEN GALAN

Produced in association with SBS INDEPENDENT

Commissioning Editor JENNIFER CRONE

A Film Australia Production In association with Melodrama Pictures

Executive Producer PENNY ROBINS