Charlie and Grandpa Joe, played by actors Peter Ostrum and Jack Albertson, respectively, save themselves from their Fizzy Lifting Drink-induced demise by burping and gently floating down, their brush with death teaching them to keep their feet on the ground as they continue their tour through the enigmatic chocolatier’s factory.
In reality, Ostrum and Albertson were floated at a concerningly high height on piano wires, suspended in a leather harness that dug uncomfortably into the crotch as it held their entire body weights. Ostrum recalled Albertson leaning over to him after they finally descended and joking that “they should be playing the ‘Nutcracker Suite’ in this scene.”
“There were probably a lot of things in that film that were not OSHA-approved,” Ostrum said in a recent phone call.
Half a century later, the memories for those who had a hand in making the film are sweet, even if some of the details are fuzzy.
“Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” is at times tender and terrifying, a children’s movie from another era unafraid to frighten and unaccustomed to sugarcoating. The first film adaptation of Roald Dahl’s darkly comic novel “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” the movie follows five children who find the handful of golden tickets hidden across the globe by famed and reclusive candy tycoon Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder).
They are invited to tour the factory guided by Wonka himself, who shows them fantastical rooms and unbelievable inventions while quoting Shakespeare and poet Arthur O’Shaughnessy, gliding through the facility and glibly leading the party as the naughty children get picked off the tour one-by-one.
The movie was positively received by critics upon release — in his 1971 review, Roger Ebert called it “probably the best film of its sort since ‘The Wizard of Oz’ ” — but failed to become popular until years of holiday screenings on network television made it a staple and repressed nightmare for many.
The cast and crew relocated to Munich for filming in 1970, as construction was underway in the city for the 1972 Summer Olympics. The shoot went longer than originally expected, delaying the start time for the next film that needed to use the same studio: the Berlin-set musical drama “Cabaret,” directed by Bob Fosse and starring Liza Minnelli.
Rusty Goffe, who played one of the Oompa-Loompas working in the factory, said the cast could keep time to Fosse’s popping onto the set to complain. “Every afternoon at 5:30, he came into the studio shouting, ‘When is this g--d--- movie ending!’ ” he said. “It was hysterical.”
One notable complication for the shoot: The screenplay did not exist as filming began. Dahl, who had signed on to write the script, had instead turned in an outline pointing to different sections of the book. To remedy this, producer David Wolper called David Seltzer, with whom he had worked previously on the quasi-fictional documentary “The Hellstrom Chronicle,” to ask if he would finish the “Wonka” screenplay, uncredited, in exchange for Wolper’s company producing his first film. (They were worried their credibility would be shot if another writer’s name appeared beside Dahl.)
Seltzer, an aspiring screenwriter, said yes and headed to Munich, where he wrote pages that were sent to the set as he finished them. It was the first real screenplay he had written.
“It was a baptism by fire,” Seltzer said.
In contrast with the intense deadline pressure the adults were under — which included having to come up with an ending for the film over the phone as the entire crew waited — the kids on set remember the experience as a candied wonderland.
Paris Themmen, who was 11 when he played cowboy-hatted television devotee Mike Teavee, said the sets were private Disneyland rides just for them.
“I would be one of the only children who gets to play on it. Not only that, everything is either edible or looks edible,” he said. “Not only that, there’s music. Not only that, there’s Gene Wilder to play with.”
The Wonka kids, all grown up, keep in touch regularly. “They’re the people who’ve known me longest, and they’re the only people that shared that experience,” said Julie Dawn Cole, who played the ever-demanding Veruca Salt. “They’re the only people that would understand it, because they were there.”
But it wasn’t always fun. Cole remembers feeling terribly alone as shooting began. She had never been away from home before and was suddenly living and working in a new place hundreds of miles away, accompanied by a chaperone she met for the first time at the airport.
“Dear mummy, I’m having a lovely time, but I do want to come home,” she wrote early in production in a letter she sent back to London.
Wilder, who Cole remembers as being extraordinarily kind, knew she was alone and tried to make her feel especially welcome. She turned 13 during production on the day they filmed the scene where Veruca is deemed a bad egg and is sent down the garbage chute, and Wilder arranged a photographer to take a set of color stills — still unusual for the era — to commemorate her birthday.
As time passed, Cole grew more comfortable. The kids all grew close, but she became especially fast friends with Denise Nickerson, who played chronic gum-chewer Violet Beauregarde. They would listen to David Cassidy and the Carpenters records in Nickerson’s hotel room and dance when the day was done. “We used to refer to each other as ‘sister,’ ” Cole said of Nickerson, who died in 2019.
Though the “kids” largely stayed in touch throughout the years, many of the cast and crew’s paths diverged after “Wonka.”
Some stayed in show business. Most notably, Wilder’s star continued to rise as he played a revolving cast of eccentrics after Wonka. He collaborated with writer-director Mel Brooks in 1974′s “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein,” and was well-recognized for his work alongside comedian Richard Pryor in buddy comedies such as “Silver Streak” (1976) and “Stir Crazy” (1980).
He died in 2016 from complications from Alzheimer’s disease. He chose to keep his condition private for years, according to a statement from his nephew Jordan Walker-Pearlman, largely because when children recognized him as Willy Wonka, he didn’t want any adults to mention illness and make the kids worry.
“He simply couldn’t bear the idea of one less smile in the world,” Walker-Pearlman wrote.
Cole went on to appear in British television and films for years, including a turn in a leading role for the BBC medical drama “Angels.” After retiring from acting more than a decade ago, she studied to become a psychotherapist. She said it’s not too different from acting, just a different way of figuring a person out.
After playing an Oompa-Loompa, Goffe took on multiple roles in “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope,” including one of the desert-dwelling Jawas early in the film.
Seltzer went on to write “The Omen,” a 1976 horror about a child who is actually the Antichrist that became one of the highest-grossing films of that year. Now, he’s just grateful people know he had a hand in “Willy Wonka” despite Dahl being the sole credited screenwriter.
“It was a magical piece of justice gifted to me by the universe that anybody knows I had anything to do with it,” Seltzer said.
Others left the stage behind after the movie. Ostrum is now a veterinarian, mainly working with horses and dairy cows from different farms in Upstate New York. Michael Bollner, who played the gluttonous, chocolate river-drinking role Augustus Gloop, works as a tax accountant.
Themmen quit acting as a teenager, became an entrepreneur at an early age and now runs the Wonka Shop, a collection of autographed photos, memorabilia and Willy Wonka-themed Funko Pops of characters from the 1971 film. He said customers appreciate the guarantee of authenticity that comes from doing business with someone who was actually in the movie.
And now, a new set of cast members will use Dahl’s book as a jumping-off point for a new generation: Another adaptation of Dahl’s book was announced in May, set to star Timothée Chalamet as a younger Willy Wonka. But the original’s magic is hard to beat — just look at the tepid reception of the 2005 adaptation directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp.
The lasting appeal, Ostrum thinks, comes from the morality play of the story: People like to think that if you’re a good person, eventually you do get the golden ticket. He said he’s humbled and proud to have been a part of a movie people are drawn to decades after its release.
“It’s such a kick to have something like this,” he said. “It’ll probably outlast all of us. Hopefully it will.”
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