50 Years Later: The Still Sweet Legacy of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
I first watched Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory during the summer of 2001, when I was four years old. Sometime after the end credits rolled, I waddled into our little English garden and decided to have a nibble of one of the buttercups poking through in the grass. You will be unsurprised to discover that it tasted acrid and bitter and that I promptly screwed up my face and spat it out again. ‘But— but- -’ little four-year-old me thought, ‘—but in Willy Wonka’s garden the yellow butter-tea-cups are edible and filled with a breakfast brew! The toadstools and mushrooms ooze sweet white cream! And the trees don’t sprout boring old fruit, but giant jellified gummy bears!' According to my four-year old logic, in Wonka’s edible garden these synaesthetic saccharine delights could exist and so in our garden they could too. So was the bittersweet belief that ‘Anything is possible’ the film inspired - bittersweet because, of course, it's not true. Today marks the 50-year anniversary of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, which premiered in the United States on this day in 1971. Time reveals a legacy that is more sweet than sour.
The 1971 adaptation of Roald Dahl’s 1964 book ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ has an origins story that reads like a saccharine fairytale, complete with the requisite obstacles. Once upon a time, the story of Charlie Bucket and his lucky visit to a chocolate factory found its way into the hands of a 12-year-old girl called Madeline Stuart, the daughter of a Hollywood filmmaker, Mel Stuart. Madeline approached her father and asked him to make a film out of the story. In Stuart’s memory, his daughter’s innocent plea went something like this: ’Daddy... I want you to make this into a movie!’ A self-confessed chocoholic, Stuart said yes. And the rest was history? Not just yet...
The early 1970’s wasn’t Hollywood’s happiest hour. Low attendance and a struggling national economy meant that the U.S film industry was in a state of near-collapse and financing the movie was no easy feat; studios were cash-strapped. It was a stroke of sweet luck that the producer of the film, Mel Stuart’s friend David Wrober, had a connection to the Quaker Oats Company who, by happy chance, were looking for a way to break into the chocolate industry. In an unprecedented move in Hollywood, Quaker Oats agreed to finance the film on account of the fact that it would allow them to launch a ‘Wonka’ bar. A convenient if imperfect marriage was formed between the food company and the producers. A Happily Ever After? Still not yet...
There were active forces that didn’t want the candy man to make the leap from page to silver screen. Having long been vocal about Hollywood and its poor representation of black people, the NAACP objected to the adaptation because of the colonial overtones of the Ooompa Loompas in Dahl’s story (described as “a tribe of miniature pygmies” who were imported from Africa); they didn’t want additional attention being brought to the novel. The NAACP eventually suggested that “The solution is to make the Oompa-Loompas white and to make the film under a different title.” Mel Stuart agreed. The title was changed to ‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’, a change that would also benefit the marketing of the Quaker Oat Company’s ‘Wonka’ bar. After Stuart consulted with some black actor friends, it also was decided that the elf-like characters would be carrot orange with grass-green hair. Whether this amounted to ‘whitewashing’ or not is a matter for the individual to decide but changing the skin colour was the only way to adapt the book without making more significant changes to Dahl’s story. After all, it was the man himself penning the screenplay.
Dahl’s screenplay - bloated and too close an adaption of the book, was eventually revised by newbie screenwriter David Seltzer, but the fantastical elements of the author’s story remained largely intact: chocolate rooms with chocolate waterfalls and rivers, fizzy-lifting stations that send Charlie Bucket and his grandfather floating to the ceiling, and elevators that fly straight into the sky. Harper Goff, famed for his work on the 1945 Disney film ‘20,000 Leagues under the Sea’, was tasked with bringing Dahl’s demanding vision to life in the art department. Then there were difficulties in casting too, and a cross-country search took place for the Oompa Loompas and the lucky ticket-winning children (lamentably, only white actors were cast). With scouting and sketching underway, producers had the formidable challenge of finding somewhere to shoot the movie. After considering the Guinness Factory in Ireland and – wait for it - a national monument in Spain, producers settled on the Munich Gas works and Bavarian Film Studios in Germany as the central filming locations. It was cheaper than America and the location’s foreignness to British and American audiences would work in the favour of creating a ‘Neverland’ story.
Tinged with sweetness and sourness, pre-production on Wonka came to a close in late August 1970 and principal photography began. For the adults on set, budgetary problems were an ongoing source of stress and the unusual marriage between Hollywood and the food industry was one of the main causes. Unlike Paramount or Universal, who might have expected the film to go over budget, Quaker Oats viewed the film as one long advertisement for their new bar and were unsurprisingly less sympathetic when the weather was bad and shooting had to be delayed or when something went wrong on set and more money had to be poured in (or, in the case of the chocolate waterfall, a specially sourced anti-foaming solution). The kids also had their tribulations (and were only renumerated £60 per week for their hard labour). Stuart was a tough director. So tough, in fact, that the child actors used to joke that they deserved Oscars for their roles (or for putting up with Stuart). He treated the young actors as adults and perhaps that’s one reason why the performances are so strong. But Stuart reflected that overall, it was like ‘one big slumber party’ for the child actors. Stories from the set include Paris Themmen, who played Mike Teevee, releasing bees from underneath a bell jar in Wonka’s chewing gum machine. Denise Nickerson (playing Violet Beauregarde) and Julie Dawn Cole (Veruca Salt) fought over Peter Ostroff, who played Charlie Bucket, and took turns being his ‘girlfriend’ day-by-day. After lunch breaks, Ostroff and Gene Wilder, who played Wonka himself, would walk back to set together sharing a chocolate bar. There was an excitable atmosphere on set and, filmed without storyboards or pre-production rehearsals, it translated into authenticity in the final film.
Image source: https://www.thedelite.com/willy-wonka-and-chocolate-factory-movie-facts-you-never-knew/
Filming came to a bittersweet end in November 1970, cast members said their teary goodbyes, and then seven months later, Willy Wonka premiered in the United States. While time has judged differently, the contemporary reception to the film was, at best, lukewarm. From a $2.9 million dollar budget, the film only made $4 million in theatres and ranked as #53 in the box office. There were a number of reasons for this. Several reviewers panned the movie; a critic from the New York Times called it ‘tedious and stagy with little sparkle and precious little humor’. The fun and spectacle of Willy Wonka didn’t sit well with an anxious and cynical audience. In the Vietnam era, The French Connection, The Omega Man, and A Clockwork Orange were in, and optimism and fun were out. The film also had to contend with the declining weekly movie attendance across the U.S, which reached an all-time low of 14 million in 1971 (from 44 million in 1963). On top of this, Dahl didn’t exactly enthuse about the final product. Finally - and this is what the director attributed primary responsibility to: a lacklustre marketing effort on behalf of Paramount Pictures.
But box-office results aren’t everything. Like sherbet - sour at first and then Oh so sweet, Willy Wonka has gone on to gain a mass following of fans and gained the all-desirable ‘cult’ film status. The phenomenon happened over time. Six years after the film appeared on cinema screens, it was sold to Warner Brothers and became one of their best-selling video cassettes. Then, periodic screenings on cable and network television over the following decades meant that it gained an even wider following and stayed within Western cultural consciousness. The never-ending references to Willy Wonka in popular culture - from The Simpsons to Austin Powers to Marilyn Manson’s music videos, is testament to this. The same could be said about the upcoming Willy Wonka origins story, whether it turns out to be a good film or not. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory currently stands as the second most watched film of 1971 on Letterboxd (the Goodreads of film).
Re-watching the film in 2021, it seems almost inevitable that the film has found new and wide- ranging audiences and there’s one main reason for it: a stellar and totally captivating performance from Gene Wilder. The director attributed the film’s longevity to the fact that ‘it was made for adults; it was not made for children’ and it was Wilder himself that brought the grown-up fun. Wilder’s Wonka is sarcastic and witty, ensuring that the final film ended up as a ‘story for children’ only as much as After Eights are for post-dinner treats and Yorkie bars are just for boys. Wilder created a more nuanced and entrancing character out of Wonka than what is portrayed in the book - a Wonka who is dishonest but trustworthy, sarcastic but still empathetic, indifferent but deeply caring, and aloof but charming. Sure, the sets seem slightly dated (the chocolate room in particular) but watching Gene Wilder sing ‘Pure Imagination’ is so wholly captivating that one almost doesn’t notice the set’s limitations. Creating, let alone portraying, such an enigmatic version of Wonka is a tall order, but Wilder made it looks effortless. As evidence of his skill as an actor, Willy Wonka shows Charlie little interest until the very end of the film and then within minutes conveys a parental love to the boy that seems entirely believable. Wilder’s tantalising hot then cold, sugary then sour, sweet then salty performance sustains the whole film.
From the outset, it seemed like the Wilder-Wonka synergy was made to be. Wilder was a relative newcomer to Hollywood in 1970, making his feature film debut in the 1967 film Bonnie & Clyde, but when he walked into the casting room at the Plaza Hotel in New York, Mel Stuart knew he was the man straight away – ‘That’s Willy Wonka!’ he said. Wilder himself immediately seemed to have an intuitive understanding of how to bring the character to life, agreeing to take on the role on one condition: he said to Stuart, “I would like to come out [of the factory] with a cane and be crippled because no one will know from that time on whether I’m lying or telling the truth.’’ Like a magician, Wilder’s Wonka was going to draw you in and keep you in the palm of his hand. To the child actors on set, the Wilder-Wonka symbiosis was very much real. Julia Winter recalled that between takes the kids would crawl all over Wilder yelling, ‘It’s my turn to sit on his lap!’. In turn, Wilder would tell them jokes and stories; he ‘never got cross’. I remember feeling the same captivation as a child watching the film: I wanted to spend time with Wonka. It was only some adults who missed the magic trick. Dahl criticised Wilder’s performance as ‘pretentious’ and insufficiently ‘gay’. Wilder himself recalled hearing talk of mothers saying that the film was ‘cruel to the children’, but he understood that ‘maybe some mothers felt that way, but the children didn’t feel that way...there are limits and they want to know the limits’. The continuing classic status of the film is evidence that the kids (and Wilder) were right. The Wilder-Wonka magic has survived 50 years without souring. The only bittersweetness in watching the actor sing and twirl across the screen is knowing he is no longer with us.
Image source: https://cometoverhollywood.com/2016/08/29/musical-monday-willy-wonka-the-chocolate-factory-1971/
If Gene Wilder carried the film, then what about the story itself? The plot is simple, heart- warming, and doesn’t deserve close scrutiny. Willy Wonka really is a ‘show’, the story is secondary to the individual charisma of Wilder and the spectacle of the image and music. We don’t know if Charlie will be happy or sad once he’s inherited Wonka’s factory. We also don’t know what happens to the rest of the children after they’ve been punished. But who cares? The audience is taken to a joyful fun park where you want to eat everything on screen and play with all the gizmos and gadgets, and where the music is so catchy that you can’t get it out of your head for days and weeks after.
Select ideologues have (and will) taken issue with the story, discarding it as gauche capitalist propaganda. One Marxist criticism of the story even gained enough traction that the director took notice in later years. The parts seem to be there: a businessman running a competition by hiding five golden tickets in his candy bars, competition from other candy makers, the Wonka-Oompa Loompa relationship, and a ‘Rags to riches’ story for Charlie. But one might ask if this is an unnecessary and selective reading. The parts for an alternative vision are equally apparent: from the wild and uncontrolled creativity and experimentation inside the factory to the joy found within the chocolate work itself, and from the relentless drive forward ‘You have to go forward if you want to go back’ to the end picture of the elevator shooting through a glass ceiling and into the skies. If a critic really wanted to make the comparison, such images would sit more easily in Soviet Russia than capitalist America. Wonka might have a capitalist wrapper but take a bite and look closely inside and its ideological filling is incoherent (it is, after all, entertainment). One could imagine how the film might be set in a collectivist community rather than a ‘capitalist’ factory, but it would have made for a worse film. It is the sense of unease that runs throughout the film that has made it timeless, whether its Wonka’s frustration with August Gloop for polluting his pure chocolate river, his fear over someone leaking the secret recipe for the ever-lasting gobstopper, his nightmares in the tunnel sequence, or his anxiety over finding a worthy heir for the factory, which finally manifests as a misjudged outburst at Charlie. It’s the fraught relationship between abundance and greed that makes for such compelling watching. Anyway, as the screenwriter stated in an interview, the film is ‘...not the function of sitting down and intellectualising... it’s the function of scotch tape, cardboard, let’s put on a show!’ Why spoil the fun and examine the parts individually when the sum of the parts is a universal message people need to hear now as much as they did in 1971? Reward honesty and integrity, not greed.
A moral message delivered in an almost subversive tone is another reason for why the film feels timeless. Instead of adults dragging tired and bored children around, the adults in this film are at the mercy of their kids and Wonka. Young viewers can marvel at the gluttony of August Gloop, the smart-mouthed Violet Beauregarde, the wanton bad behaviour of Veruca Salt, and Mike Teevee’s devotion to cable. It’s escapism at its best to watch other kids do what you can’t do: speak back to parents and yell and scream. It’s equally as tantalising when the naughty children are punished in fantastical ways. Augustus, drinking from the chocolate river, falls in and then gets sucked up a chocolate chute. Violet chews forbidden gum and then blows up into a blueberry the size of a small horse. Veruca falls down a garbage chute. And Mike finds himself sucked into a television. Best of all, the parents are equally guilty of bad-behaviour as the kids - and, boy, do they pay for it. Wonka might be a film for children and adults, but you can guess who’s going to really have the best time. It is little Charlie, after all, who wins Wonka’s factory at the end of the day.
In the scene where Willy Wonka drinks from a yellow flower-shaped cup and then eats the cup, the cup itself was made of wax. Gene Wilder had to chew the wax pieces until the end of the take, at which point he spat them out. Adults that once watched the film as children now know that flowers in the garden aren’t edible. Our eyes can pick up the small imperfections in the film - the sweets that look plastic and chocolate river that looks like exactly what it was - ‘dirty, stinky water’. But through a child’s eyes - even coming to the film half a century after its release, the film really can be a ‘world of pure imagination’. In another fifty years, will children still wander into the garden, pick up a buttercup, and bite into it with all the belief in the word that it’ll taste like sweet, white chocolate? As long as parents continue to show children the film, they will - and what a marvellous legacy for a film to have. Fifty years on, it’s safe to say that Willy Wonka has had a sweet and indelible impact on our sadly mostly inedible world.
Sources for post:
Mel Stuart, Josh Young, ‘Pure Imagination: The Making of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’, 2001.
Julia Dawn Cole, ‘I Want It Now! a Memoir of Life on the Set of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’, 2011.
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