Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is a 1971 musical fantasy film directed by Mel Stuart, and its central idea still lands: five Golden Tickets, one factory tour, and a poor paperboy named Charlie Bucket holding the last one.
Trailer, via Warner Bros. Entertainment.
The Golden Ticket Winners
The five winners are a matched set of appetites. Augustus Gloop eats. Veruca Salt takes. Violet Beauregarde chews. Mike Teevee watches. Charlie, a 12-year-old paperboy whose family cannot afford a second Wonka Bar, just wants in.
- Augustus Gloop, the gluttonous West German
- Veruca Salt, the spoiled
- Violet Beauregarde, the gum-loving
- Mike Teevee, the television-loving
- Charlie Bucket, the poor paperboy
A mysterious man speaks to each of the first four. He later introduces himself to Charlie as Arthur Slugworth, a rival of Wonka’s, and offers a large sum for a sample of the Everlasting Gobstopper. Charlie takes the ticket home and asks Grandpa Joe to chaperone him.
Gene Wilder and the Cane
Gene Wilder plays Willy Wonka, and the casting story is its own small comedy. All six members of Monty Python wanted the part and were judged not big enough names. Spike Milligan was Roald Dahl’s original choice. Peter Sellers reportedly begged Dahl for it. Joel Grey was the front runner until Stuart decided he was not physically imposing enough at five-foot-five. Fred Astaire wanted it, but at 72 may have thought himself too old.
Wilder walked into an audition at the Plaza Hotel in New York and ended the search. Producer David Wolper said the role fit him “tighter than one of Jacques Cousteau’s wetsuits.” Stuart said Wilder had “the sardonic, demonic edge that we were looking for.” Wilder accepted on one condition: his first entrance, coming through the door with a cane and a limp, then the cane sinking into a cobblestone and standing straight up by itself while he keeps walking.
A Factory That Stayed Shut
Filming ran in Munich from August to November 1970. Dahl is credited with the screenplay, but David Seltzer did an uncredited rewrite, and the changes helped push Dahl to disown the film. Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley wrote the songs; Walter Scharf arranged and conducted the score.
Paramount released it on June 30, 1971. Reviews were positive. The money was not: $4 million by the end of the original run. It earned a Best Original Score nomination at the 44th Academy Awards and a Golden Globe comedy or musical nomination for Wilder. The song “The Candy Man” outlived the box office, recorded by Sammy Davis Jr.
That gap is the story. The film lost money and won the culture anyway. Wilder’s entrance is why. The limp, the cane, the crowd going quiet — it tells you Wonka is not a kindly host but a man running a test, and every child in the building is a specimen. The effects and the Oompa-Loompas have aged; the meanness has not. This is a children’s movie with a cold streak, and the cold streak is the part worth keeping.
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