9 Delicious Facts About ‘Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory’
In the decades since its 1971 release, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory has become a family holiday favorite — a pretty impressive feat for a fairly dark film in which misbehaving children receive bizarre punishments at the hands of Gene Wilder. Adapted from the 1964 Roald Dahl book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the film tells the story of poor-yet-hopeful Charlie Bucket, who thinks winning a contest to visit a chocolate factory will change his life. And it does … but not in the ways Charlie expected.
As befits such a whimsical, fantastical film, the backstory of how the movie came to be is also a little unexpected. So grab your golden ticket, wake up your grandparents (why are they all sleeping in one giant bed?!?) and settle in to learn some things you never knew about the original candy man.
1A 10-year-old girl came up with the idea to turn the book into a movie.
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Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory director Mel Stuart had previously specialized in documentaries. It was his daughter, Madeline, who inspired him to take on the successful project. She begged her dad to make it because Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was her favorite book.
2The film was basically made as an advertisement.
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Obviously, the enthusiasm of a fourth grader was not enough to get the movie made on its own. Rather, once Stuart had the concept and brought some producers in, an unusual deal was struck.
Quaker Oats was talking to numerous people about ways to promote its new line of chocolate bars. Producer David Wolper convinced Quaker to do something it had never done before: buy the rights to the book and produce a film version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to promote a line of candy that would now be called Wonka Bars. The film was renamed from the original book title, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, to Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory in order to promote this candy tie-in.
3The chocolate bars were not made out of chocolate.
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Most of the chocolate bars in the film were actually made of wood, to prevent them from melting under the film set’s lights (and, possibly, to keep cast members from eating them).
4The script was rewritten by someone who worked on a very different kind of movie about children.
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Though Roald Dahl is given official solo credit for the screenplay, it was said that he never handed in a fully finished version to producers. According to a 2021 article in The Washington Post, “Dahl, who had signed on to write the script, had instead turned in an outline pointing to different sections of the book.” So rewrite duty was given to screenwriter David Seltzer, who worked on the script but went uncredited. If you know that name, you’re probably a horror movie fan, because Seltzer is best known for writing the screenplay for The Omen. Despite his spooky credits, Seltzer delivered the script for a beloved children’s film … though maybe we can blame how scary that boat ride part in the beginning is on him.
5Gene Wilder had a specific request before agreeing to take on the role of Willy Wonka.
Wilder said he would only make the film in he could do a somersault in the scene when he first meets the children. When asked why, the actor said that having Willy Wonka start out limping and end up somersaulting would set the tone for that character, who was supposed to be unpredictable.
6The film’s shoot made another director very angry.
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Wonka shot in Munich in 1970, on a soundstage that was supposed to host the shooting of Cabaret as soon as Wonka wrapped. But the filming was running with delays, which enraged Cabaret director Bob Fosse. “Every afternoon at 5:30, [Fosse] came into the studio shouting, ‘When is this g–d— movie ending!’” Rusty Goffe, who played one of the Oompa-Loompas, told The Washington Post. “It was hysterical.”
7Grandpa George was almost blind.
The German actor who played Grandpa George, Ernst Ziegler, was nearly blind due to poison gas exposure he suffered in World War I. He could not see well on set, and was instructed to look for a red light to guide him when his character was meant to be looking in a certain direction. Probably why he never got out of bed.
8Most of the kids in the film later retired from acting.
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Julie Dawn Cole, who played the iconic brat Veruca Salt, was the only one from the Wonka kids who pursued acting after the making of this film. Peter Ostrum, the actor who plays Charlie Bucket, became a veterinarian.
9His Wonka role made Gene Wilder want to keep his fatal health diagnosis a secret.
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Gene Wilder passed away in 2016 due to complications from Alzheimer’s disease, a diagnosis that he largely kept secret. According to Wilder’s nephew Jordan Walker-Pearlman, this was because Wilder knew that children recognized him as Willy Wonka, and he didn’t want them to worry or feel sad about his health. According to Walker-Pearlman, “[Wilder] simply couldn’t bear the idea of one less smile in the world.”
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