A NEW COMEDY FROM DIRECTOR OF “” ACADEMY AWARD WINNER BEST FILM

Ladies in Black

1 Ladies in Black

an alluring and tender-hearted comedy about the lives of a group of de- partment store employees in 1959

Director Bruce Beresford

Producers Allanah Zitserman and Sue Milliken

Screenplay Bruce Beresford and Sue Milliken

Based on the novel The Women In Black by Madeleine St John

PRAISE FOR THE BOOK

“... masterpiece, a witty and poignant snapshot of Sydney the year before yesterday.”

BARRY HUMPHRIES

“This book is like the perfect, vintage little black dress. It is beautifully constructed, it evokes another time while being mysteriously classic and up to date, and it makes you feel happy. I love it.”

KAZ COOKE (Author & Cartoonist)

“Seductive, hilarious, brilliantly observed, this novel shimmers with wit and tenderness.”

HELEN GARNER (Author & Screenwriter)

Cover designed by Studio DA All other images by Rene Gruau

© 2016 Samson Productions Pty Ltd, The Entertainment Quarter 205/122 Lang Road Moore Park, NSW 2021 Australia

2 Background

Now is the perfect time to bring this story, with all of its charm and wit, to the screen.

Madeleine St John’s Australian classic The Women In Black is to be brought to the screen by internationally acclaimed director Bruce Beresford - cinematic master of wit and tenderness. Beresford has been passionate about making a movie of this celebrated novel ever since he read it almost twenty years ago.

The film titledLadies In Black is set in the summer of 1959 as the world is on the brink of the swinging sixties and captures through its beautifully crafted characters the rapidly changing cultural landscape of Australia at the time. As author and broadcaster noted, “Madeleine St John evokes the collision of modern European history and the still awakening Australian culture”. The novel, described by many reviewers as a masterpiece, is uncannily modern. Its themes, a cultural clash with the arrival of migrants in a staid and homogenous society and the transition of a young girl to womanhood, are as relevant today as they were half a century ago.

3 Contents

BACKGROUND 3 BRIEF SYNOPSIS 5 SYNOPSIS 6 BRUCE BERESFORD 8 ALLANAH ZITSERMAN 10 SUE MILLIKEN 12 ALLANAH & SUE’S TAKE 14 BRUCE’S TAKE 15 MADELEINE & ME 16 PRODUCTION & AUDIENCE 20 CONTACT 21

4 Brief Synopsis

Sydney, at the end of the 1950s, when thousands of European migrants are arriving to make new lives. Suburban schoolgirl Lisa, while waiting for the results of her final high school exams, takes a summer job at a large city department store. Here she meets many of the “ladies in black” (all the employees are required to wear black) including Magda, a worldly, sophisticated and imperious Slovenian immigrant who manages “Model Gowns”, the high fashion boutique within the store. Beguiled and influenced by the exotic ways of Magda and her circle of friends, Lisa starts metamorphosing - to the horror of her controlling father and bewildered mother - from a shy schoolgirl to a positive and glamorous young woman.

5 Synopsis

Adapted from the best selling novel by Madeleine a young woman with a neglectful husband. An St John. The story takes place in Sydney in the older supervisor, Miss Cartwright, who comes to summer of 1959 - a time when thousands of appreciate Lisa’s intelligence. Most important of migrants were coming to Australia from Europe. all, Magda - the Slovenian immigrant who is in charge of “Model Gowns” the most fashionable Lesley Miles (Lisa) is 16 years old. Her father, Ed section of the store. Because of her innate Miles, works as a compositor on the night-shift of sophistication and an unverifiable claim that she a major city newspaper. Her mother is a suburban worked in a Paris fashion house before the war, she housewife. is somewhat resented by the Australian sales ladies.

Lisa has just finished high school and has to wait Magda finds Lisa a capable assistant and befriends for her final examination results to appear. She her. She invites Lisa to lunch at her apartment in a wants to attend University, a wish forcefully harbour suburb and introduces her to her Hungarian opposed by her father, who - in common with many husband, Stefan, and his friend, Rudi. Lisa enjoys men of his generation - thinks that educating girls the European food provided, so different to her as far as University is pointless, as they won’t have mother’s cooking. After lunch Magda gives her a career but will simply marry and have children. some advice on her clothes, hair and make-up. Lisa’s mother is more sympathetic but both she and Lisa are dominated by a man whose life, apart from Lisa’s parents (especially her father) find it difficult his printing job, is an obsession with horse-racing. to cope with their daughter’s changing attitudes and style. With her growing self confidence she Lisa finds a job over the Christmas holidays at now tells them that she no longer wants to be called Goodes, a major city department store. Here she Lesley, but “Lisa” – the name by which she is meets a variety of sales ladies (the store uniform is known by the staff at Goode’s. the black dress), and becomes friends with some of them - Faye, an ex-dancer who has had some The high school exam results are announced. unhappy love affairs and is “over men”, Patty, Because he works at the newspaper where all the 6 results are published Mr Miles is the first to hear Patty’s life hits a crisis when her husband of his daughter’s brilliance. He is stunned then disappears for some weeks after a night of torrid overwhelmed by the congratulations of the staff of lovemaking. When he returns she realises he was the newspaper. Despite a display of indifference, he embarrassed at his outburst of passion. An outburst is proud of his clever offspring. that in fact delighted her. Once he is aware she was not offended but thrilled, their passion continues. Still with reservations – he considers Universities hotbeds of licentiousness - he bows to a concen- With the help of a sale price and a staff discount trated assault by his wife and daughter and agrees Lisa manages to buy the dress that she has fallen to Lisa’s enrolment. in love with. She wears it – now no longer an awkward schoolgirl but a beautiful young woman Goodes is inundated in the Christmas rush. Lisa has - to a party at Magda’s apartment. Even Mr Miles her eye on a beautiful dress in Magda’s department is now reconciled to her “refugee” friends. With that she can’t afford. hesitation, but then with warily expressed delight, he enjoys the pate, salami and Australian wine Lisa suggests to Magda, that Stefan’s friend Rudi, (he’d always been a beer drinker) offered by the who is looking for an Australian girl-friend – effervescent Magda. “some of them are very beautiful” – might like to meet Fay. Magda surveys Fay…” she is about Lisa tells the group that after University she’d like 30 or less. She is not quite beautiful, but not bad. to be “an actress… or a poet… or a novelist… or Her maquillage is terrible and of course she has maybe all three”. no style. Perfect!” The romance blossoms, as Faye (tired of the rough tactics of her Australian would- be-lovers) succumbs to a man who has charm and appreciates her. Her friend, Myra, warns her against falling in love with a “Continental” but Fay is not to be dissuaded. 7 Bruce Beresford

DIRECTOR

AWARDS [selected] DONS PARTY Australian Film Awards Best Director BREAKER MORANT Australian Film Awards Best Script and Best Director Australian Film Awards Best Adapted Screenplay and Official Competition, Cannes Film Festival Academy Award nomination for Best Director BLACK ROBE Canadian Academy Awards Best Film and Best Director MAO’S LAST DANCER winner of 11 international film festival Audience Awards for Best Film DRIVING MISS DAISY Academy Award Winner Best Film 8 ONE OF AUSTRALIA’S most popular and well-known directors, Bruce Beresford is a graduate of Sydney University. He worked from 1964 - 66 as a film editor in Nigeria, then went to where he was head of the British Film Institute Production Board from 1966 - 1970. The board encouraged many talented film makers at the beginning of their careers - including Ridley and Tony Scott, Mike Leigh, Nick Broomfield, Stephen Frears and Derek Boshier. Bruce returned to Australia in 1972 and made the feature The Adventures of Barry McKenzie - a popular success. Later films includeDon’s Party, The Getting of Wisdom, The Club, , The Fringe Dwellers and Breaker Morant.

In 1983, Bruce went to USA and directed Tender Mercies; for which he received an Academy Award nomination. Other films made in America include Crimes of the Heart (1986) and Driving Miss Daisy, (1989) which won four Academy Awards including Best Film.

Black Robe followed Driving Miss Daisy and won ten Canadian Screen awards including Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay. Later films include Mister Johnson, Silent Fall, Double Jeopardy and Mao’s Last Dancer. His most recent film (2016) isMr Church a drama with Eddie Murphy, Britt Robertson and Natasha McElhone.

For TV Bruce has directed And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself with Antonio Banderas, a 3 hour Bonnie and Clyde with Emile Hirsch and Holliday Grainger and an episode of the 2016 remake of Roots.

He has written an entertaining and indiscreet book about his film experiences – Josh Hartnett Definitely Wants to do This. Published by Harper Collins. Various short stories by Bruce have appeared in published collections. A new book of faxes between Bruce and the producer Sue Milliken, There’s a Fax from Bruce was recently published (2016) by Currency Press.

Bruce has also directed operas on stage in Australia, USA and Italy including A Streetcar Named Desire (Andre Previn), Elektra (Richard Strauss), Of Mice and Men (Carlisle Floyd) and The Dead City (Erich Wolfgang Korngold).

9 Allanah Zitserman

PRODUCER

10 ALLANAH HAS BEEN in the film industry for 17 From 2009 to 2013, Allanah represented the Years. In 1999, after graduating from University Australia Day Council as an Australia Day Of Technology, Sydney’s Business School, Allanah Ambassador. teamed up with film maker Stavros Kazantzidis to produce and pen her debut feature filmRussian From 2008 - 2012, Allanah created and produced Doll starring Hugo Weaving. The project garnered the film development programs “Student Film the pair the 2000 AACTA/AFI Best Original Project” and “In The Raw”. Screenplay Award, making her the youngest recipient of this award. She followed this by Schools across NSW took part in the “Student Film writing and producing the black comedy Horseplay Project” and dozens of short films were produced, starring Abbie Cornish in 2003. screened and exhibited. In 2011, key sponsor Hoyts was awarded, for its association with the program, In 2007, Allanah founded the celebrated Dungog Marketing Campaign of the Year by AHEDA Film Festival, winner Inside Film’s 2012 Best Film (Australian Home Entertainment Distributors Festival Award. She was responsible for attracting Association). some of Australia’s biggest corporate partners including Apple, Adobe, Hoyts and Toyota. The For “In The Raw” Australia’s leading acting festival annually raised $1 million in sponsorship. talent read unproduced screenplays to live audiences. The program successfully assisted In 2009, Allanah established Australian Film in the development of projects to production Syndicate (AFS) a film distribution company that including Strangerland, Last Cab to Darwin, championed Australia independent films. 33 Postcards, Sleeping Beauty and Little Death.

11 Sue Milliken

PRODUCER

12 SUE MILLIKEN BEGAN her career in film at the ABC in the late 1960s. After working as a continuity girl on ABC drama productions and later freelancing as continuity and production manager on productions such as Skippy and The Picture Show Man, she began producing in the late 1970s with Tom Jeffrey. Together they produced Weekend of Shadows (1977), The Odd Angry Shot (1978) and Fighting Back (1981).

In 1985 Sue produced Bruce Beresford’s The Fringe Dwellers, Australia’s official entry at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival. In 1990/91 she worked again with Beresford, as Australian producer of Black Robe, the first official Australia/Canada feature film co- production.

In 1994 Sue produced the feature filmSirens , directed by John Duigan, and in 1995, Dating The Enemy directed by Megan Simpson Huberman. In 1996 she produced (with Greg Coote) Paradise Road directed by Bruce Beresford. In 1999 she produced the Imax documentary Sydney, A Story of a City and in 2001 the television production My Brother Jack, winner of the Best Mini Series at the 2002 AFI Awards.

She was producer or executive producer for three series (sixty six episodes) of the US Sci-Fi TV series Farscape for the Jim Henson Company. In 2005 she was an executive producer for the Project Greenlight Australian million dollar movie, Solo and in 2006 she produced the short drama Crocodile Dreaming for director Darlene Johnson. In 2014 she produced the documentary The Redfern Story, with director Darlene Johnson, for ABC TV.

From 1980 to 2009 through her company Samson Productions, Sue represented the completion guarantor Film Finances, Inc., in Australia. Film Finances is the world’s leading completion guarantor and during this time Film Finances successfully delivered over two billion dollars worth of Australian feature films and television productions.

Sue is a former Chair of the Australian Film Commission, and she served for five years on the board of Screen West and for five years as a member of the Film and Literature Censorship Board of Review. She is a past President and Vice President of Screen Producers Australia (SPA) and was made a life member of the association. She is a recipient of the Australian Film Institute’s Raymond Longford Award. In 2004 she presented the National Film and Sound Archive’s fourth Longford Lyell Lecture, and in 2013 she served as National President of the Cinema Pioneers association. She is a recipient of the Centenary Medal and the Order of Australia (AO) for service to the film industry.

She has published three books, Dogs In the City; a memoir, Selective Memory and, with Bruce Beresford their correspondence There’s A Fax From Bruce.

13 Allanah & Sue's Take

Like Beresford’s Driving Miss Daisy, this is a subtle film that discovers drama in small things, as it looks into the heart of its charming characters and finds us a gift of human spirit.

LIKE THE BEST Australian stories this film St John’s trademark dialogue. is uniquely and authentically Australian, but explores universal themes that appeal to an The charming and lively characters and the international audience - women challenging essential humour and good nature of the piece the status quo and discovering themselves; and will attract audiences who are drawn to films like migrants settling in a new land with hope for a The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, The Dressmaker, better future. Love Actually, The Lady In The Van and Brooklyn.

It is easy to forget in the current wave of refugees THE PERIOD The late 50s, is a turning point all over the world, that around eight million in our nation’s history. As author and critic Toni people were displaced as a result of the Second Jordon pointed out in her Readings Monthly World War, and the reception of those who came review, “Australia [was] on the cusp of many to Australia was not always a welcoming one. revolutions: multicultural and sexual, as well as Ladies In Black is a story of the effect on Australia the breakdown of class structures”. The script and Australians of just a few of these displaced manages, through its tapestry of characters, to people. It is not a political film; rather through its touch on all of these important themes. sensitive treatment of the subject, it reminds us that however different we may seem to each other THE SETTING Sydney’s iconic department on first acquaintance, we are all human beings just store habitat, ingrained in Australian’s psyche, is trying to get on in the world. original and unexplored in our cinema. There is also the visceral and visual production value to Beresford is right at home with this very human be attained from the period’s music, fashion and story, while his personal relationship to the author design. provides invaluable authenticity and connection to the work. This is seen with the adaptation, which beautifully captures the novel’s delightful wit and exuberant sensibility and effortlessly incorporates 14 Bruce's Take

I was instantly captivated

I READ Madeleine St John’s (pronounced Synjin) that she did, but said “I often went shopping there novel The Women in Black a few days after with my mother”. Her characters are so alive, so Clive James raved about it to me shortly after its human, that I find it hard to believe they weren’t publication in 1993. based on real people. I suspect this was actually the case. I was instantly captivated by its effortless prose style (the result of a lot of work, I know), its wit My passion for film making, which began before and its evocation of life in Sydney in the late 1950s. I was 10 years old, has resulted/is still resulting With a varied group of characters thrown into the in a long career. I can’t claim that all my films mix, I became obsessed with the idea of making a are successes – some failed both critically and feature film of the work. commercially. However, the ones I most strongly believed in have been shown world-wide, to Apart from the appeal of recreating, on film, the considerable acclaim - Breaker Morant, Tender Australia of over 60 years ago, I was fascinated by Mercies, Driving Miss Daisy, Black Robe, Mao’s Madeleine’s deft handling of key themes which are Last Dancer, Crimes of the Heart. I am totally as contemporary today as they were when the book convinced that Ladies in Black will be equal to the is set - the emergence of a young girl to emotional best of these. and physical maturity and the cultural clash as isolated and Anglocentric Australians interact, often Madeleine St John died in 2006. The Women in warily, with migrants from the other side of the Black was the first of her four novels and is the world. Themes which Madeleine handles with a only one set in Australia. The others, all quite light touch, warmth and above all, humour. outstanding, have a London setting. They are - The Essence of the Thing (nominated for the Booker As the novel is set around a large department story, Prize), A Pure Clear Light and A Stairway to based on David Jones, I asked Madeleine if she Paradise. had a holiday job there when she was a University student, just as Lisa does in the book. She denied 15 Madeleine & Me

BY BRUCE BERESFORD

Nineteen sixty was my first year as an indifferent student at Sydney University. In pursuit of the prettiest girls I joined the Sydney University Players where I was an even more indifferent actor, easily outclassed by the stars of the era—who included John Bell, John Gaden, , , Clive James and .

16 MADELEINE ST JOHN (she pronounced the name was basic, the most striking items being a number ‘Synjin’, though I understand her family preferred of well-thumbed paperbacks and a vicious white the standard ‘Saint John’) was to be found cat, which snarled and clawed the air whenever backstage, helping with the costumes and props. it considered I had approached too close to its Definitely not one of the university’s glamour girls, mistress. she still managed to be striking. Tiny and with rusty red hair, she always reminded me of a sparrow She seemed to have become even smaller, the with her darting movements, her beak-like nose, rusty red hair maintained its aura with bottled her inquisitive eyes. Her odd appearance contrived assistance and she was almost permanently to prevent her performing in anything other than attached to an oxygen tank with a long tube - the minor theatrical roles, although she was cast, rather result of emphysema. She was as sharp-tongued as maliciously I thought, in a revue, Dead Centre, in ever and tartly dismissed my query as to whether which she appeared, singing, dancing and dressed it was advisable to smoke so heavily with such a in red crepe, as Lola Montez. condition. She was happy to talk at length about literature, classical music and jazz. Her opinions, I can recall only a couple of conversations with her as always, were firm and precise - contemporary - all vague now (forty-eight years later!) - including novelists being airily dismissed as a bunch of one where she expressed a passion for the poetry of parvenus. Mitsuko Uchida, she insisted, was the Thomas Hardy. I distinctly remember being so in finest classical pianist and Art Tatum the greatest awe of her wide reading - ‘are you really unaware jazz pianist. Personal information was much harder of the work of Gwen Raverat and Djuna Barnes?’ to obtain, though I found out that she had married - her forthrightness and her wit, that, in order to Chris Tillan, a fellow student from Sydney, in prevent my self-esteem plummeting, I took evasive 1965. They had lived in San Francisco for a few action. The factor which distinguished her from years, where he studied film. Once his course virtually all of our contemporaries was that she was was completed they decided to go to London. the daughter of a famous father, , Madeleine went on ahead but ‘he never arrived’. a prominent QC and Liberal politician, though if She made no further comments, so I gathered he father or family was mentioned she immediately had met another lady - and that was the end of the made it clear the subject was taboo. marriage.

I left for England in 1963 and lost track of She refused to discuss her Australian relatives, just Madeleine for thirty years. My attempts at as she had back at university, although she made establishing myself as a film director slowly met vague references to their ‘ill - treatment’ of her. with some success. One day, in 1993, I was having Subsequent meetings with a couple of charming lunch with Clive James, by now an internationally members of her family, in Australia, have led me known critic and poet, when he mentioned that a to believe that Madeleine never recovered, while novel he’d just read, The Women in Black, was by still in high school, from the shock of the death, by our old university colleague, Madeleine St John suicide, of her mother. She then created a cast of - and was a comic masterpiece. I bought a copy evil relations who had accepted her father’s re- immediately, agreed with Clive’s assessment, and marriage. called the publisher for Madeleine’s number. In the late 1960s, following her alleged She was cordial and cheery over the phone, said abandonment by her husband, she lived around she’d seen a number of my films over the years and London in various apartments, sharing with various was delighted I wanted to film her novel. Australian university friends. To the astonishment of some she fell under the influence of a dubious A few days later I went to see her. She was living Indian mystic, Swami Ji, and for a couple of years in a large apartment on the top floor of a council adopted Indian clothes and assumed an Indian house building in Notting Hill. The area had been name. derelict but was now being gentrified. Madeleine must have qualified for rent assistance some years She supported herself with odd jobs, mostly in previously and there was no indication that her bookshops and an antique shop in the West End, financial situation had improved. The furnishing although she tried to vary this routine by applying,

17 at one point, and unsuccessfully, for a position as Kenneth Tynan’s secretary. It was not until sometime in 1991 that Madeleine decided to write a book herself, convinced, she told me, she could do at least as well as the authors of so many of the books she was selling. She was fifty-two when The Women in Black was published in 1993 and it is the only one of her four novels to be set in Australia. It is difficult not to see Madeleine herself in the clever and sensitive young heroine, Lesley (Lisa) Miles, though the well observed lower middle-class family background she describes with such affection was certainly not her own, as she grew up in the smart suburb of Castlecrag, on Sydney’s north shore, and had a father she insisted had a cold and distant personality. It is probable that she appropriated the family of her university friend, Colleen Olliffe, who lived in a modest suburb. Colleen’s father, like Mr Miles, was in the printing business.

The novel was clearly set in a fictionalized version of the David Jones department store in Elizabeth Street, Sydney. The interplay of the saleswomen (who dressed in black in 1960, when the novel is set, just as they do now) is so convincing, so comprehensively realized, that I assumed Madeleine had a holiday job there while a student, but she insisted this was not the case, ‘although I often went shopping there with my mother’.

Madeleine’s subsequent novels, A Pure Clear Light, The Essence of the Thing (nominated for the Booker) and Stairway to Paradise, are, I think, equally superb - though none have the warmth and pervasive good humour of The Women in Black - and mark her as a major writer. The palette is small, but the observation and the dialogue acute, touching and often very funny. A fastidious stylist, whose model was Jane Austen, she created, or re- created, a section of late twentieth-century London society in a manner similar to Austen’s world of the nineteenth century. I remain astonished at the fidelity with which Madeleine captured the manners and mores of the middle-class English as I was never aware that she knew many of these people. I assume that her years working in bookshops introduced them to her and her interpretive genius took over from there.

If Madeleine’s social circle was not wide, there were a number of devoted friends who seemed to be able to cope with her changes of mood, her demands and general waspishness. Perhaps her

18 fervent Christianity, acquired sometime after she Madeleine was always capable of surprising me. dispensed with Swami Ji, supplied her with a moral Her wild enthusiasm for the TV series, Buffy, code that meant she often found others wanting. At the Vampire Slayer seemed to me totally out of some point most friends and relatives were cast off. character. I found a few episodes on DVD and A few managed a comeback but many, especially failed, still fail, to see why this nonsense would relatives, were in permanent outer darkness. Agents have interested her. But then I have all of Willie and publishers were almost saintly in the way they Nelson’s discs and my friends can’t equate that dealt with Madeleine’s tantrums, her obsession with my passion for opera. with detail. She was aware, I realize, that a major strength of her writing was the accumulation of On one of my visits to London, a year or so before minutiae. She was so furious over some minor Madeleine died, there was no answer at the flat, so I point in a French translation of one of her novels feared the worst. Through her former literary agent, that she refused to allow it to appear. Kamikaze- Sarah Lutyens, I tracked her down in a hospital on like, she stipulated in her will that there were to be the Kings Road. She was in a surprisingly stylish no translations of her novels into any language. public ward with a TV set suspended over the bed and numerous tubes connecting her to all sorts With a terrible sense of foreboding I sent her the of sci-fi machines. Never one to complain about screenplay of The Women in Black, written by Sue her unenviable health she remained cheerful. She Milliken and myself. To my surprise, astonishment enjoyed meeting the other patients and nurses and rather, she made no comment other than saying hearing the stories of their lives. She told me her she looked forward to seeing the film. Perhaps she blood count. felt that if I could make a success of the intimate character studies of Driving Miss Daisy and ‘Is that good?’ I asked. ‘My doctor says that for me Tender Mercies then I could do it again with her it’s very good,’ she replied. ‘If it was anyone else novel. It must have been a struggle, but she kept they’d be dead.’ her reservations, and I can’t believe they were not numerous, to herself. That was the last time I saw her. We spoke on the phone a few more times, then an email Unlike so many of Madeleine’s friends and arrived, in June 2006, saying she had died. She associates I escaped being sent to Siberia - probably must have been bitterly disappointed that I had because I was only in London occasionally, was directed numerous other scripts but not The a link with university days (she enjoyed talking Women in Black, but affected indifference. She about our contemporaries) and shared Madeleine’s also minimized the acclaim she received for The interest in music. We even managed a visit to the Essence of the Thing, although it cannot fail to have Royal Albert Hall to hear Mitsuko Uchida play the meant a lot to her. Schumann Piano Concerto. Somehow, I engineered Madeleine down four flights of stairs in Nothing Her will left her modest estate, as well as future Hill into a taxi, and then, complete with large royalties from her books, to charity. I was named oxygen cylinder, into a box near the stage. On her literary executor, in addition to which she left another occasion, I arranged to take her to dinner me a charming drawing, by Bernard Hesling, of the at the Ivy so that she could meet an American film Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Various friends maker she admired, Whit Stillman - the writer- shared out her modest collection of books. On her director of three witty character-driven films desk was a hundred pages or so of a new novel - a dealing with middle class Americans, The Last few typed but many in longhand and unnumbered. Days of Disco, Metropolitan and Barcelona. Whit, With the help of Sarah Lutyens the pages were a handsome young man, was polite but clearly arranged in their probable correct order. There bewildered by this tiny person with dyed red hair, are many characteristically witty and touching an oxygen cylinder, and forceful opinions. I also scenes, but the manuscript is too fragmentary for introduced her to my son, Adam, then a classics publication. student at Balliol, and found myself somewhat bored as they discussed, at length, Adam’s theory The angry cat was no problem as it had as to the identity of Shakespeare’s Mr W.H. predeceased her. Madeleine assured Adam he had no idea what he was talking about. 19 Production & Audience

BUDGET AUD $10-12 million financing budget & schedule available upon request

CAST proposed cast list available upon request

SHOOTING Early 2017

GENRE Comedy / Drama

PERIOD 1959/1960, Sydney Australia

AUDIENCE 35+ women Ladies In Black will appeal to audiences drawn to The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, The Help, The Dressmaker, Love Actually and Brooklyn.

THE MUSICAL The sellout stage musical adaptation received a glowing response, was nominated for six 2016 Helpmann Awards and won Best New Australian Work.

THE AUTHOR Madeleine St John’s books have been printed and celebrated the world over. St John was the first Australian woman to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction. In 2013, The Life of Madeleine St John a biography by Helen Trinca was published.

20 Contact

Allanah Zitserman Lumila Films [email protected] Tel: +61 (0)2 9973 2227 Mob: +61 (0)427492420

Sue Milliken Samson Productions [email protected] Tel: +61 (0)2 8353 2600 Mob: +61 (0) 419 435 127

21 Ladies in Black

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