Airdate: Palazzo di Cozzo

Documentary special Palazzo di Cozzo, which profiles cult Italian-Australian businessman, Franco Cozzo, screens on ABC TV Plus next week.

Cozzo built a furniture empire in Melbourne becoming famous and beloved for his distinct television commercials in which he would star “in Northa Melbourne anda Footisgray.”

The Australian Dream. Italian Style.

At just twenty-one years old, Franco Cozzo travels alone on the wave of post-war migration from Ramacca, Sicily, to Melbourne. He arrives on Australia Day, 1956. A classic migrant story, Franco has no money to his name, just a suitcase in hand, packed by a mother who has farewelled her one surviving child.

The young Italian begins work as a door-to-door salesman in a rapidly expanding suburbia. It is a difficult reality, characterised by hard work and isolation. Keen to avoid a racist slur and door-in-the-face, Franco learns to target homes with lemon trees in the front yard to increase his chance of a sympathetic welcome; he has quickly become a savvy businessman. In two years, he will have opened his first furniture store and his wares are in vogue, elaborate neo-baroque and rococo pieces imported from Italy. But Franco wants to put his name in lights.

Franco’s arrival in 1956 was auspicious, as it marked the year Australia introduced the great new mass medium: television. His trajectory was already tied up with the progress of the nation. By 1967 Franco funds and produces ‘Carosello’ – Australia’s very first non-English language television show – that features fellow migrants crooning Italian pop-songs in their mother tongue. From here, it will be only a few years until he broadcasts the first iteration of the format that will truly make his name: the television advertisement.

“Megalo megalo megalo…Se migliore mobile volete comprare, Franco Cozzo e dove andare…Buy from Franco Cozzo!” Franco speaks direct to camera, arms outstretched, as he rises from a studded chaise lounge. The tri-lingual catchphrase – repeated in Greek, Italian and English – becomes a refrain stuck in the head of generations of Melbournians and turns Franco Cozzo into a household name, and a very rich man. Mediterranean customers flock to Franco’s stores and the press begin to realise they have an entertainer on their hands.

In many ways, Franco has made a caricature of himself. His mispronunciation of the English suburb names remains part of the popular vernacular to this day. These pop-culture references signal the evolution of the Mediterranean migrant in Australia’s collective psyche, from the butt-of-the-joke to the joker, from the cultural marker to the cultural producer.

But Franco Cozzo’s name endures for another reason: an illicit myth. Franco’s first-born and only son, is convicted of selling drugs from the furniture store in the early nineties. Rumours abound and soon all of Melbourne has an opinion. Franco’s response: “People are jealous.”

2018: Franco is eighty-two years old and still works six days a week. He still sells the same furniture as when he opened his doors sixty years ago. And he is still beloved by Melbourne. Nobody seems to mind the rumours, in fact, they lap them up. Passers-by come into his stores for a photo or stop him on the street.

But customers are dwindling. When someone with an eye for the elaborate furniture does enter, they are no longer Greek or Italian. They are the more recent migrants: African, Chinese, Arabic. They share a taste, but not a language, and Franco struggles to do business with those outside his community.

Franco decided to put his iconic Footscray store on the market, but it is not so easy to let go. As he confronts the reality of his own mortality, he’s not so sure about leaving his work and the public eye. A salesman and performer to the end, will Franco really be able to move on?

Production credits: A Film Camp production, for the ABC. Principal production investment from Screen Australia in association with the ABC. Financed with support from Film Victoria. Theatrical Distribution by Sharmill Films. Written and directed by Madeleine Martiniello. Produced by Philippa Campey and Samantha Dinning. ABC Executive Producer Kalita Corrigan.

8:30pm Wednesday April 27 ABC TV Plus.