By Erin Free & Dom Romeo
When director, Mel Stuart, and producers, David L. Wolper and Stan Margulies, were casting their adaptation of Roald Dahl’s beloved novel, Charlie & The Chocolate Factory – the story of a young boy whose big heart melts the far more hardened one of an eccentric confectionary magnate – they struck gold when a nationwide search yielded sweet-faced youngster, Peter Ostrum, to play the film’s youthful hero, Charlie Bucket, opposite big star, Gene Wilder, as candy man, Willy Wonka. Discovered while performing at The Cleveland Playhouse, Ostrum beautifully essayed the inherently decent Charlie Bucket, whose natural charm anchors the famous hallucinatory weirdness of the film, which boasts the kind of legitimate jolts, jumps, and, well, freak-outs that you would only find in a family film released in 1971.
From the strange, colourful, kinda creepy Oompah Loompahs who work in Wonka’s factory (“They used to have wild parties where they’d drink the German beer,” one of the film’s stars, Julie Dawn Cole, told FilmInk in 2004 of the dwarf extras who played them. “Y’see, it didn’t take much to fill them up. Coupla pints and they were up to the brim!”) to that infamous trippy boat scene, the renamed Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory kicked heartily against family film tradition. Cuteness is at a minimum in the film (with perverse adult humour laced ingeniously and inoffensively through the narrative), largely thanks to the horrific gaggle of children who join Charlie Bucket on their famous tour of Wonka’s fantastical confectionary factory, replete with chocolate rivers, edible flowers, and all manner of sugary wonders.
The most unforgettable of the children is, of course, the foul tempered, spoilt rotten Veruca Salt, played by the aforementioned Julie Dawn Cole. One of her fondest memories of the production was of celebrating her thirteenth birthday – on the day that they were filming the famous scene in which, desperate to snatch a golden egg, she is famously sent tumbling down a chute, never to be seen again. “I was a little bit frightened of the director,” the actress told FilmInk in 2004, “and somebody came running in saying, ‘You better get down to the set! Mel Stuart’s going mad.’ I thought, ‘Oh my god, I’m in trouble now’. I ran into a completely darkened set, and there was a birthday cake there, and everybody was singing happy birthday. I blew the candles out and Mel said, ‘Okay, right, now, on with the filming!’ And that was it…then they chucked me down the chute.” Ironically, Julie Dawn Cole is one of those rare people who dislike chocolate. Let loose in a chocolate factory, she was one of the few kids who wouldn’t eat the props. “I was cheap…I saved the budget thousands!”
Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory was a huge success (Tim Burton took another, less impressive run at the material in 2005, with Johnny Depp), and it justifiably remains a seminal family classic. Its brilliant young cast, however, didn’t do much major subsequent work, and in fact, its young leading actor, Peter Ostrum, never made another film. He even turned down backing studio, Warner’s offer of a three-picture deal because, well, he just wanted to do something else. At the time, Ostrum’s family had acquired a horse, and the young boy started working at the stable where the steed was kept. His interest in horses was keen and enthusiastic, but something else made a strong impression on him: the horse’s veterinarian. “He really enjoyed what he did for a living,” Ostrum told The American Veterinary Medical Association. “My father was a lawyer, and I didn’t have a clue what he did all day. But I knew exactly what the veterinarian did. Someone making a living from something that he enjoyed really sparked my interest.” Peter Ostrum simply followed his dream and became a vet. “Acting was fine,” he has said, “but I wanted something more steady, and the key is to find something that you love doing. That’s what my profession has given to me.”
