50 Years Later: The Still Sweet Legacy of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Image source: https://people.com/food/gene-wilder-death-willy-wonka-pure-imagination/
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. âButâ but- -â little four-year-old me thought, ââbut in Willy Wonkaâs 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 donât sprout boring old fruit, but giant jellified gummy bears!' According to my four-year old logic, in Wonkaâs edible garden these synaesthetic saccharine delights could exist and so in our garden they could too. So was the bittersweet belief that âAnything is possibleâ 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 Dahlâs 1964 book âCharlie and the Chocolate Factoryâ 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 Stuartâs memory, his daughterâs innocent plea went something like this: âDaddy... I want you to make this into a movie!â A self-confessed chocoholic, Stuart said yes. And the rest was history? Not just yet...
The early 1970âs wasnât Hollywoodâs 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 Stuartâs 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 âWonkaâ 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 didnât 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 Dahlâs story (described as âa tribe of miniature pygmiesâ who were imported from Africa); they didnât want additional attention being brought to the novel. The NAACP eventually suggested that âThe solution is to make the Oompa-Loompas white and to make the film under a different title.â Mel Stuart agreed. The title was changed to âWilly Wonka and the Chocolate Factoryâ, a change that would also benefit the marketing of the Quaker Oat Companyâs âWonkaâ 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 âwhitewashingâ 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 Dahlâs story. After all, it was the man himself penning the screenplay.
Image source:Â https://www2.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/search-perfect-willy-wonka
Dahlâs screenplay - bloated and too close an adaption of the book, was eventually revised by newbie screenwriter David Seltzer, but the fantastical elements of the authorâs 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 â20,000 Leagues under the Seaâ, was tasked with bringing Dahlâs 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 â 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 locationâs foreignness to British and American audiences would work in the favour of creating a âNeverlandâ 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 ÂŁ60 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 thatâs one reason why the performances are so strong. But Stuart reflected that overall, it was like âone big slumber partyâ for the child actors. Stories from the set include Paris Themmen, who played Mike Teevee, releasing bees from underneath a bell jar in Wonkaâs 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 âgirlfriendâ 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:Â 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 âtedious and stagy with little sparkle and precious little humorâ. The fun and spectacle of Willy Wonka didnât 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 didnât 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 arenât 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 âcultâ 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 Mansonâs 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 thereâs one main reason for it: a stellar and totally captivating performance from Gene Wilder. The director attributed the filmâs longevity to the fact that âit was made for adults; it was not made for childrenâ and it was Wilder himself that brought the grown-up fun. Wilderâs Wonka is sarcastic and witty, ensuring that the final film ended up as a âstory for childrenâ 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 âPure Imaginationâ is so wholly captivating that one almost doesnât notice the setâs 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. Wilderâs 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 â âThatâs Willy Wonka!â 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, âI would like to come out [of the factory] with a cane and be crippled because no one will know from that time on whether Iâm lying or telling the truth.ââ Like a magician, Wilderâs 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, âItâs my turn to sit on his lap!â. In turn, Wilder would tell them jokes and stories; he ânever got crossâ. 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 Wilderâs performance as âpretentiousâ and insufficiently âgayâ. Wilder himself recalled hearing talk of mothers saying that the film was âcruel to the childrenâ, but he understood that âmaybe some mothers felt that way, but the children didnât feel that way...there are limits and they want to know the limitsâ. 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:Â 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 doesnât deserve close scrutiny. Willy Wonka really is a âshowâ, the story is secondary to the individual charisma of Wilder and the spectacle of the image and music. We donât know if Charlie will be happy or sad once heâs inherited Wonkaâs factory. We also donât know what happens to the rest of the children after theyâve 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 canât 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 âRags to richesâ 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 âYou have to go forward if you want to go backâ 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 âcapitalistâ 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 Wonkaâs 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. Itâs the fraught relationship between abundance and greed that makes for such compelling watching. Anyway, as the screenwriter stated in an interview, the film is â...not the function of sitting down and intellectualising... itâs the function of scotch tape, cardboard, letâs put on a show!â 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 Teeveeâs devotion to cable. Itâs escapism at its best to watch other kids do what you canât do: speak back to parents and yell and scream. Itâs 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 whoâs going to really have the best time. It is little Charlie, after all, who wins Wonkaâs 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 arenât 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 - âdirty, stinky waterâ. But through a childâs eyes - even coming to the film half a century after its release, the film really can be a âworld of pure imaginationâ. 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 itâll 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, itâs safe to say that Willy Wonka has had a sweet and indelible impact on our sadly mostly inedible world.
Sources for post:Â
Mel Stuart, Josh Young, âPure Imagination: The Making of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factoryâ, 2001.Â
Julia Dawn Cole, âI Want It Now! a Memoir of Life on the Set of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factoryâ, 2011.Â
Pure Imagination: The Story (Making) of Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory:Â https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yyev_3S_Y4
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