30 Deliciously Surprising Facts About ‘Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory’

Denise Nickerson, the young actress who played Violet Beauregarde, told The Telegraph that she had a thing for Peter Ostrum, who played Charlie. She was embarrassed when her character had to pick her nose, because she didn’t want to do it in front of her crush.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Gene said he would only accept the role if he could appear crippled in his entrance and then “do a forward somersault and jump up” to surprise the crowd. His request was granted — and the scene is now a famous movie entrance.

According to Bustle, Gene wrote a letter to the costume designer when he received the first sketches of his Willy Wonka costume. He wanted the costume to feel more eccentric and wrote it should be for “A vain man who knows colors that suit him, yet, with all the oddity, has strangely good taste. Something mysterious, yet undefined.” Pictured is Gene’s original costume from the film, which went on display in 2012 ahead of an auction.

Denise (Violet) recalled to People in 2001 that the blue makeup used in the famous scene in which she blows up into a blueberry “resurfaced through her pores” two days later while she was at school — and it took another 36 hours to clear up.

According to the CBC, the movie’s production was funded by Quaker Oats to promote their upcoming Wonka chocolate bar, the company’s foray into candy. That’s why the film is called Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory instead of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, like the book on which it was based. Pictured is the 2001 version of the chocolate bar, which was released for the 30th anniversary of the film.

Willy Wonka was directed by Mel Stuart, who specialized in documentaries — but his daughter, Madeline (now a successful interior designer) told 1stDibs that she begged her dad to make a film about her favorite book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory author Roald Dahl was slated to write the screenplay, but he did an outline instead, the Washington Post reported. The production team had to bring in a new screenwriter, David Seltzer, to finish the script.

While he was still credited for the screenplay, Roald Dahl was rumored to have been disappointed by many aspects of the film, including the director, the music and the casting of Gene Wilder, as reported by Business Insider.

While a chocolate river sounds delicious in theory, the one for the film was made of water, chocolate and cream. The cream eventually spoiled, which resulted in an awful smell for the end of the shoot.

Director Mel Stuart wanted some reactions from the film’s young actors to be authentic, such as in the iconic scene where they meet Willy Wonka. The Chocolate Room was also kept under wraps so that the kids were filmed seeing it for the first time.

Barbra Streisand took her son to see Willy Wonka in June 1971, but not a lot of other parents did. The film only made $4 million in theaters, according to the Evening Standard. It surged in popularity in 1996, though, when the film was re-released.

Even though the film didn’t make a lot of money at the box office, Roger Ebert raved about it in the Chicago Sun-Times in 1971. He wrote, “[The film] is everything that family movies usually claim to be, but aren’t: Delightful, funny, scary, exciting, and, most of all, a genuine work of imagination.”

Entertainment Weekly reported that Gene considered it an “insult” after it came out. While he liked Johnny Depp who starred as Willy Wonka, Gene blamed Warner Brothers and the film’s director, Tim Burton, saying, “I don’t care for that director and he’s a talented man, but I don’t care for him for doing stuff like he did.”

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the actors relocated to Munich for the shoot, except for Michael Bollner (Augustus Gloop in the film) who was from there.

According to the Washington Post, the shoot for Cabaret was booked in the same studio as Willy Wonka in Munich, but Wonka filming ran over, delaying the start of the Liza Minnelli film.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, 12-year-old Peter was spotted at the Cleveland Play House and was offered the role of Charlie Bucket.

Julie Dawn Cole, who played Veruca Salt, told Insider that Gene was a “warm, kind person.” She said he even made sure to look out for her during filming in Germany because she didn’t have a parent with her during the shoot — only a chaperone.

Peter (Charlie) told Variety that he and Gene would often have lunch together and share a chocolate bar before returning to filming. Talk about method acting!

Willy Wonka was nominated for one Academy Award in 1972 — Best Music: Scoring Adaptation and Original Song Score — but there was no nomination for Gene. Some, like People‘s Alex Heigl, consider this a snub. For a piece in honor of the film’s 45th anniversary, Heigl wrote: “Wilder is one of the greatest comic actors of the 20th century, but his turn as Wonka is one of the most finely-tuned feature-length performances from any actor, ever.”

Actor Ernst Ziegler lost nearly all of his vision because of poison gas in World War 1. He had to follow a red light to know where to look while filming.