Gene Wilder in Willy Wonka & Chocolate Factory Photo: Alamy
Was it as scary as it looked in the tunnel with Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka? This is something that fans often ask about the “Wonka Kids,” the now-adult golden ticket holders from “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” “Yes,” says Julie Dawn Cole, the film’s terribly spoiled madam and Veruca Salt’s all-around egg woman. “It was scary.”
In the story, based on the Roald Dahl novel, children win a trip to Wonka's factory, an industrial paradise where all your tastiest dreams come true, but where children are also sent to the oven — presumably burned alive — or blown up. like a giant blueberry for daring misdeeds. And the kids are all rotten, except for the pure-hearted Charlie Bucket (Peter Ostrum).
Released in 1971 (and now a prequel starring Wonka, starring Timothée Chalamet as a young Willy Wonka), the original film is an unusual fairy tale, embodied in Wilder's dynamic, whimsical performance.
It goes all the way into the childhood trauma arena as Wonka takes the kids along the chocolate river and into this tunnel in his Oompa-Loompa-driven boat, the SS Wonkatania. Wonka, like the ingredients in his marshmallow room, has a breakdown. Nauseous images flash across the tunnel walls as Wonka recites a poem—»There's no earthly way of knowing which direction we're going»—that builds into a bloodcurdling (and chocolatey) screech with a golden sheen of malice like a ticket. in his eyes. «We didn't know he was going to show it this way,» Julie Dawn Cole recalls of filming the scene.
Indeed, both Gene Wilder and director Mel Stewart felt like a real Wonka. During filming, based in Munich, Stewart sprang surprises around every corner of the factory, while Wilder stunned his co-stars with unexpected outbursts and antics. To create the boat scene, the SS Wokatania was raised onto a scaffold. The actors sat in the boat for hours, not even allowing a bathroom break, as images were projected onto a movie theater-sized screen: a centipede crawling across a man's face, a giant eye, a headless chicken. Cole, in her memoir I Want It Now, recalled even worse images that were not edited, including «one of a large-diameter needle being inserted into an arm.»
Afterwards, Denise Nickerson, who plays Violet Beauregard, an avid bubblegum chewer, asked, «And they say this is a kids' movie?» But – as Wonka himself might say – drop it, turn it around. Mel Stewart had an aversion to childish things. He made Willy Wonka for adults and believed that was the secret ingredient to the film's longevity. “I firmly believe that children are very smart,” he said. “They are very smart, fashionable and will get all the links in the photos.”
But not everyone liked Willy Wonka. It was a box office failure. Roald Dahl himself was disgusted by this. “It’s a pretty cheesy movie,” he said. Dahl was not alone. The film's songwriting duo, Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley, who were nominated for an Oscar for the songs' scores, hated what Stewart did with their musical numbers, although the songs — especially Oompa Loompa, Pure Imagination and I've Got a Golden Ticket are cultural touchstones.
The idea for a Willy Wonka film first came to Mel Stewart's 10-year-old daughter, Madeline, after she read Dahl's 1964 novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Stewart took the idea from David L. Wolper, a television and documentary producer who made a deal with Quaker Oats for a small budget of $2.9 million. The film was essentially a huge advertisement. Quaker planned to release a chocolate bar — an actual Wonka bar — but the chocolate never made it to shelves. 
Gene Wilder as Willie Wonka and Peter Ostrum as Charlie Bucket. Photo: Entertainment Pictures/Alamy Stock Photo
Stewart took the production to Munich to give it a «storybook quality». The Bavarian setting truly gives the effect of a modern-day Grimm fairy tale — a timeless, not-quite-reality in which the chocolate factory looms over the town like the rumored cursed castle. However, as luck would have it, Charlie — too poor to afford the swanky Scrum Bar — lives near the world famous factory.
As for the mysterious man himself — Mr. Willy Wonka — Roald Dahl wanted Spike Milligan or Peter Sellers. Sellers apparently begged Dahl for this role.
Songwriter Leslie Bricusse later said that Fred Astaire, then 70, also wanted to play Wonka. Astaire claimed that the filmmakers turned him down. Bricusse admitted that he was always «annoyed» that he missed out on the chance to work with Astaire on the film. But Mel Stewart denied that Astaire was running. He wanted Gene Wilder from the moment Wilder walked through the door. At this point, Wilder appeared in Mel Brooks' 1967 film The Producers, which later became a cult comedy, but Brooks was a box office failure.
Wilder was unsure and agreed to take part on one condition. During Wonka's first appearance at the factory gates — a full 45 minutes later — he wanted to limp around with a cane and then shock everyone by falling and rolling forward on his feet. “From now on, no one will know whether I’m lying or telling the truth,” Wilder said.
“That was the first scene I shot,” says Julie Dawn Cole. — We weren't. I said he was going to do it. I thought, “Oh, he's limping, I hope this doesn't delay filming!”
Julie Dawn Cole as Veruca Salt Credits: Allstar Picture Library Limited./Alamy Stock Photo
Cole remembers Wilder as «a sweet, kind, funny person… not crazy.» He entertained them with theatrical stories, and song-and-dance artist Jack Albertson, who played Joe's Grandpa Charlie, entertained them with old vaudeville tricks. “We sat on their laps and told stories,” Cole says.
Some of the film's cleverest moments occur before Wonka's big appearance, when the world is gripped by golden ticket mania: a woman who won't give up her Wonka bars to pay a ransom for her kidnapped husband, and an auction for the last box. Wonka Bars in the UK, which attracts an unlikely bidder (“Your Majesty!”). Adolf Hitler's personal secretary.
Mel Stewart's son, Peter Stewart, remembers going on a picnic in a Munich park with his father and Gene Wilder. Stewart and Wilder, both Jewish, were playing a joke game of «spot the Nazi» with local Germans — just 25 years after World War II. “I remember it was hysterical,” says Peter. «They pointed at people and said, 'Oh, he's definitely one of them!'
Roald Dahl was not so amused by the filmmaking experience. He sold the rights to the book on the condition that he could write the script himself. But Dahl, who was always too kind and curmudgeonly in cinema, wanted to film his novel as it was. Mel Stewart recalled Dahl turning in a draft that would have taken two and a half hours. David Seltzer, the film's ghostwriter, had a slightly different story: that Dahl arrived on set with just 14 pages of script and notes related to the book. “He famously fell out with Mel Stewart and David Wolper,” says Julie Dawn Cole. “He just walked off the set.”
The casting of the Oompa Loompas was highly controversial. Photo: Photo 12/Alamy Stock Photo
Stewart and Wolper hired Seltzer to rewrite the script, which gave him the opportunity to begin acting in films, but on the condition that Seltzer would not be listed in the credits at all. Adding Roald Dahl's name as a screenwriter was too much of a coup for the filmmakers. Seltzer's rewrite included welcome additions, notably a plot in which rival candy maker Slugworth wants kids to steal Wonka's industry-changing «Eternal Gobstopper» formula—a moral dilemma for morally indifferent guys.
According to Mel Stewart's book, aptly titled Pure Imagination, Dahl learned that Seltzer was changing the script and called Stewart to his home in Great Missenden. Dahl read the revised script and agreed with the changes. Stewart may have been diplomatic in his retelling. Dahl biographer Donald Sturrock wrote that Dahl «hated» Stewart. «Dahl resented anyone changing his story,» says Stewart's son, Peter Stewart. “But Seltzer was nobody. Can you imagine: Dahl writes a book and the first draft, and some 25-year-old guy comes in and changes his lines.”
One change in the transition from page to screen was absolutely necessary — the Oompa-Loompas. In the original novel, Wonka's workforce were black pygmies brought from the African jungle and paid in cocoa beans. When production was announced, the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) complained to the filmmakers. Dahl was stunned by the accusations of racism; Interestingly, Dahl originally intended for the character of Charlie Bucket to also be black.
The book became, in Donald Sturrock's words, «something of a celebrity affair.» Dahl changed the Oompa-Loompas' skin to «pink and white» in subsequent runs, and Mel Stewart had the idea to make them orange dwarfs with green hair in the film. Finding actors to play the Oompa-Loompas was difficult. Stuart's son Peter, then 10 years old, was to replace him. «Sometimes they didn't have enough oompa-loompas, and they'd paint my face orange and put me in the scene,» he says. What were the Oompa-Loompas like? «I was 10 years old. I think they scared me,” he says.
Outside the box: Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka and the Oompa Loompas Photo: Allstar Picture Library Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo
Peter appears in other scenes (“Scrumdiddly, a luxury bar? How does he do that?”) and spends his days acting on the set of The Chocolate Room. The Chocolate Room is the sweetest center of the film: a factory meadow with a chocolate river and waterfall, where giant gummy bears hang from the trees, candy canes sprout from the ground, and everything is edible — even the daffodils. “It was fantastic, absolutely magical,” says Peter. Overgrown children who grew up watching this film will likely be able to smell it: the palpable texture, the long-imagined flavors on the tip of their tongue.
The Chocolate Room was the work of production designer Harper Goff. Mel Stewart wanted to capture the children's real surprise, so he delayed showing the Chocolate Room until after the scene was filmed. Although the set was closed, Julie Dawn Cole managed to stop by the studio to record her musical number «I Want It Now» (a bona fide hit from the Willy Wonka soundtrack).
Being the first to visit the Chocolate Room is very important to Veruca Salt. Veruca is the most deliciously obnoxious of all the golden ticket holders, stomping around and demanding that she get everything she wants — and getting it before anyone else — like her perpetually irritated, gasket-blowing father (Roy Kinnear). rolls behind. Cole didn't admit to Stewart that she'd seen The Chocolate Room until the 35th anniversary reunion. He responded with “colorful curse words.”
It's in the Chocolate Room where Wonka sings the film's best song, the nostalgia-inducing «Pure Imagination» (repeated in Timothée Chalamet's new film). The notes somehow float in the ether, able to transport you back to your childhood. Peter Stewart credits the orchestration to composer Walter Scharf. It would have taken a heart of darkness like Slugworth not to be covered by Pure Imagination, although songwriters Bricusse and Newley hated what Stewart did to him. «They were invited to an early screening — they hated it,» says Garth Bardsley, author of the Anthony Newley biography Stop the World. They especially didn't like the way Stewart dismantled Pure Imagination, with Wilder hanging around the Chocolate Room between verses and munching on edible flowers.
Wretched: chocolate river in the Chocolate Room. Photo: Allstar Picture Library Limited./Alamy Stock Photo
“They thought Pure Imagination would be a big hit,” says Bardsley, also a lyricist and songwriter. “They thought they had written the most beautiful song. And this is elegant, smart and childish. It just transports you. It didn't work. What made them angry was that the song was not performed. Gene Wilder — with his shaky, unsinging and not very beautiful voice — did the trick, and the song began to sound again. The song never made it into the film. It kind of drove him into a dead end.”
Newley and Bricusse were also annoyed by actor Aubrey Woods' rendition of «The Candy Man.» «Bless his heart, they couldn't say anything good about him!» says Bardsley. «Newley offered to come and sing the scene for free, but the filmmakers felt it would upset the balance of the film.» But in 1972, the song became a number one hit for Sammy Davis Jr.
Of course, not everything may be to everyone's taste. Julie Dawn Cole remembers the time she had to cut open a watermelon and remove the chocolate core. “It was filled with terrible chocolate blancmange,” Cole laughs. “It was cold, wet and slimy.” The most obviously unappetizing is the chocolate river Wonka — thin and dirty in appearance. It was made from 150,000 gallons of water and powder used to make chocolate ice cream. But it smelled on the sound stage, and additional chemicals had to be added.
“It was disgusting in real life,” confirms Peter Stewart. This does not stop the fattest of the children, Augustus Gloop, from scooping the chocolate into his mouth, after which he falls into the river and is sucked into the tube. “The tension is terrible,” Wonka says as he watches August get stuck. “I hope it lasts.” The boy is sent to a room with a fib — perhaps melted in a vat.
Unlike Dahl's book, the fates of the children are never revealed. Underneath the chocolate, there is speculation that the accidents with children being kicked out of the tour one after another are not accidents at all, but carefully planned punishments. “Stop, don’t, come back,” Wonka says amusingly and completely indifferently, while the annoying Mike Teavee eagerly jumps in front of a miniature laser pistol. Indeed, Wonka is very razor sharp. «What is this, Wonka, some kind of fun house?» Mr. Salt asks at one point. «Why?» he answers. «Are we having fun?»
It's easy to call Gene Wilder's performance dark, but that's like reducing Scrumdiddlyumptious to its most basic ingredient. This is a show that, like Wonka himself, operates on different planes of reality: a pied piper who lures children not only with promises of sweets, but also with unusual lines and literary quotes, many of which belong to Wilder himself. “We are the makers of music,” he says, quoting Arthur O’Shaughnessy’s “Ode.” “And we are the dreamers of dreams.” With his golden tickets, Wonka promises to lift the curtain, but doesn't — at least not until the very end, when he reveals to Charlie that it was all a ruse — a plan to find a child who has the guts to take over. factory when Wonka retires.
Stewart still needed the final line for the film. At this point, David Seltzer had left production and gone fishing when the pay phone rang. Stewart was on the other end of the line from Germany, demanding the last sentence. Seltzer gave him the first thing that came to mind. “Don’t forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he ever wanted,” Wonka tells Charlie. “He lived happily ever after.”
Dream Believers: Jack Albertson, Peter Ostrum and Gene Wilder Photo: Entertainment Pictures /Alami Stock Photo
Released on June 30, 1971, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory earned just $4 million. “There was a review that said, 'Mel Stewart clearly doesn't like chocolate and doesn't understand sweetness,'” Peter recalls. “Nothing hurt him more. He was a chocolate maniac.»
«I'm not sure I even talked about this movie until the late 1980s, when its cult status began to grow,» Cole says.
In 2005, Tim Burton made his own version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, an empty and heartless film starring Johnny Depp as Wonka. Gene Wilder considered this an «insult.» Burton, for all his gothic style, fails to touch the more sinister edge of the original.
The film's status grew so much that Stewart began to compete with his cousin, Marvel Comics head Stan Lee. “They used to have monthly dinners, and one day they started arguing about who was more famous, Spider-Man or Willy Wonka,” Peter laughs. “They walked around the restaurant asking people.”
Of course. Stuart understood. the power of the film to take you back to your childhood. “He used to call himself Mr Wonka,” says Peter. “He would tell people, 'I bet I made your favorite movie…'
Wonka is in theaters December 8
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