John Misto

John Misto (born 13 October 1952) is an Australian writer for film, television, stage, and fiction. His works have won "many awards including the Queensland Premier's Literary Award, three Australian Film Institute Awards, three Australian Writers' Guild Awards and a Gold Plaque at the Chicago Television Awards".

Early life and education John Misto began writing at the age of twelve and did his first television interview at ABC Television two years later. Much of his writing has been influenced by his strict Catholic family upbringing and a similar education at a Catholic secondary school in Sydney.

After graduating in Arts and Law from the University of New South Wales, he worked in the state public service as a Research Officer for the Privacy Committee. His experiences there laid the foundations for his television series, The Damnation of Harvey McHugh. He left the public service to concentrate on working as a theatre and television writer.

Television writing Misto completed a Diploma in Scriptwriting at the Australian Film and Television School in 1980. He then joined the Grundy Organisation and worked as a scriptwriter on the popular Australian television series, The Young Doctors. Two years later he wrote his first telemovie, Natural Causes, a black comedy about ageing hippies and murder, for ABC Television. That work won an Australian Film Institute Award for the Best Telemovie Script and the Australian Writers' Guild Award for Best Original Telemovie.

Misto has written extensively for children’s television. He penned several episodes of the children’s television series Dusty and Butterfly Island as well as the telemovie of Butterfly Island. He also wrote the award-winning telemovie Peter and Pompey for the Australian Children's Television Foundation. The Day of the Roses: The True Granville Story, Mary MacKillop and Gordon Bennett for Mike Willesee’s Australians, A Country Practice, Dirt Water Dynasty and White Collar Blue. He also co-wrote the miniseries The Last Frontier, starring Linda Evans and Jack Thompson, which was screened on the CBS television network in the United States.

Stage plays Over the years John Misto has written extensively for the theatre. His first play, Sky, was a monologue and was staged at the Ensemble Theatre in Kirribilli, Sydney. It was nominated for the Sydney Critics’ Award for Best New Play of the Year and also received a commendation from the Australian Human Rights Commission. in London, and in Prague (in Czech translation), followed by three years of national tours around Australia and further seasons at the Ensemble and at the NIDA Theatre, Kensington, Sydney. The play was awarded the AWGIE Television Mini-Series Original Award, The play was listed for twenty years as a study text for the New South Wales Higher School Certificate. As at 2025 it is still being studied in Australian schools.

Misto’s next plays included Gossamer, which was based on the Cottingley fairy hoax of 1917 and which was played at the Ensemble and at the Fortune Theatre in Dunedin, New Zealand;

In 2008 Misto branched out into musical theatre biography when he co-wrote Peace Train: The Cat Stevens Story which had several national tours around Australia, a sold-out performance at the Sydney Opera House and a national tour of the United Kingdom in 2017.

In 2017 Misto wrote Lip Service about the life of American make-up millionairess, Helena Rubinstein and her war with Elizabeth Arden and Revlon's Charles Revson. Lip Service was staged in Sydney at the Ensemble Theatre and in Melbourne.

In the same year, Lip Service, with a new title, Madame Rubinstein, had a sold-out season at The Park Theatre in London’s West End starring Miriam Margolyes and Frances Barber. Madame Rubinstein had two seasons and a national tour in the Czech Republic and was staged in other Eastern European countries: Lithuania, Belarus, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Latvia, Ukraine and Russia (in the cities of Ekaterinburg and Norilsk), as well as in Israel.

In 2022 Madame Rubinstein premiered at the Pushkin Theatre in Moscow starring Russia’s leading actress, Vera Alentova, on which occasion Misto became the first Australian playwright to have a play staged at a commercial theatre in Moscow. As at 2025 the play remains in the theatre’s repertoire.

Works Television A Country Practice (1981) Waterloo Station (1983) The Young Doctors (1983) Starting Out (1983) Palace of Dreams (1985) – 2 episodes Natural Causes (1985) Dancing Daze (1986) The Last Frontier (1986) Dusty (1988) (TV series) Touch the Sun: Peter and Pompey (1988) (TV movie) The Dirtwater Dynasty (1988) The Fremantle Conspiracy (1988) G.P. (1989–91) – 3 episodes Butterfly Island (1993) (TV movie) The Damnation of Harvey McHugh (1994) – creator, 13 episodes The Day of the Roses (1998) Finding Hope (2001) (TV movie) Heroes' Mountain (2002) (TV movie) MDA (2002) – 1 episode White Collar Blue (2003) – 3 episodes Second Chance (2005) (TV movie) The Cut (2009) – 6 episodes Sisters of War (2010) (TV movie) Tricky Business (2012) – 1 episode

Theatre The Last Time I Saw Paris (1980) Room for Dreamers (1980) The Dying of Angel Dunleavy (1980) Sky (1992) The Shoe-Horn Sonata (1995) Gossamer (1997) Harp on the Willow (2007) Peace Train: The Cat Stevens Story (2008) Dark Voyager (2014) Madame Rubinstein (2017) [produced in Sydney as Lip Service]

Works in printed form

Plays The Shoe-Horn Sonata, Sydney: Currency Press, 1996 Madame Rubinstein, London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2017 Lip Service (Madame Rubinstein), Sydney: Origin Theatrical, 2018 Gossamer, Sydney: Origin Theatrical, 2018 Dark Voyager, Sydney: Origin Theatrical, 2018 Harp on the Willow, Sydney: Origin Theatrical, 2018

Novels Peter and Pompey, Fitzroy, Victoria: Penguin/McPhee Gribble with the Australian Children's Television Foundation, 1988 (Touch the Sun series) The Devil’s Companions, Sydney: Hodder Headline Australia, 2005

Articles "The Make-Up Wars" (feature story), The Sunday Express (UK), 7 May 2017 "The Coming of the Fairies" (feature story), Sunday Spectrum section, The Sydney Morning Herald, 11 May 1997 "Bring Back the Golden Years", movie section, The Australian, 2 July 2005 "Profile: John Misto: Face to Face", The Weekend Australian, 14–15 May 2005

Awards 1986: Australian Film Institute Award (AACTA): Best Screenplay – Telefeature for Natural Causes 1996: New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award for Best Play for The Shoe-Horn Sonata 1999: Australian Film Institute Award (AACTA): Best Television Drama Script for The Day of the Roses 2003: Gold Plaque for Best Telemovie: Chicago International Television Awards for Heroes’ Mountain