Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory

***Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory*** is a 1971 American musical fantasy film directed by Mel Stuart. It was theatrically released in the United States on June 30, 1971.

## Plot

Charlie Bucket is a poor paperboy who often looks inside a candy shop but cannot afford to buy sweets. Going home one evening, he passes Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, where a tinker tells him that nobody ever goes in or comes out. Charlie's bedridden Grandpa Joe reveals that Wonka had shut down the factory because rival confectioners sent spies to steal his recipes. Production resumed three years later, but the gates remained locked, and to prevent more sabotage, the original workers were not rehired, leaving their replacements a mystery.

Wonka announces that he has hidden five Golden Tickets in chocolate Wonka Bars. Finders of the tickets will receive a factory tour and a lifetime supply of chocolate. The first four tickets are found by Augustus Gloop, a gluttonous German boy; Veruca Salt, the spoiled daughter of a wealthy English father; and two Americans, Violet Beauregarde, who chews gum constantly, and Mike Teevee, who is obsessed with television. As each winner is announced on television, a sinister-looking man appears and whispers to them.

A news report reveals the fifth ticket was found by a millionaire in Paraguay, causing Charlie to lose hope. The next day, Charlie is on his way home from school when he finds money in a gutter and uses it to buy a Wonka Bar for himself and Grandpa Joe. Walking home, Charlie overhears that the millionaire forged the fifth ticket. Charlie opens his remaining Wonka Bar, discovering the final ticket. On his way, he encounters the sinister figure who spoke to the other winners. Introducing himself as Slugworth, one of Wonka's competitors, he offers a cash reward for a sample of Wonka's latest creation: the Everlasting Gobstopper.

Arriving home with the Golden Ticket, Charlie chooses Grandpa Joe as his chaperone, who gets out of bed for the first time in twenty years and is miraculously able to sing and even dance with Charlie. The next day, Wonka greets the ticket winners at the front gates of the factory and leads them inside. Each signs a contract before the tour, which begins in the Chocolate Room, a whimsical indoor park with plants and flowers made of candy and a river of chocolate. The visitors meet Wonka's workforce: little people known as Oompa-Loompas.

Along the way, each child is forced to leave the tour because they violated the rules in the contract: Augustus gets sucked up a pipe after falling into the chocolate river; Violet grabs an experimental gum sample and bloats into a giant human blueberry; Veruca is deemed a "bad egg" and falls down a garbage chute; and Mike interferes in a chocolate-transmitting demonstration and is shrunk to the size of a chocolate bar. The Oompa Loompas sing a song of morality after each disposal.

While on tour, Charlie and Grandpa Joe enter the Fizzy Lifting Drinks room and sample the beverages against Wonka's orders. The drink makes them float up and have a near-fatal encounter with the ceiling exhaust fan, but burping allows them to escape and descend to the ground.

At the end of the tour, Wonka assures Charlie and Grandpa Joe that the other children will be fine before he hastily retreats to his office without awarding them the promised lifetime supply of chocolate. When they follow him in to ask about this, Wonka angrily informs them that they had violated the contract when they stole the Fizzy Lifting Drinks, thereby forfeiting their prize, and then demands that they leave. Stunned and infuriated, Grandpa Joe vows to give Slugworth the Everlasting Gobstopper in retaliation, but Charlie decides to return it to Wonka instead. Suddenly, Wonka joyously declares Charlie the winner and reveals that Slugworth is his employee, Mr. Wilkinson. The offer to buy the Gobstopper was a morality test for the kids, and only Charlie passed. The trio enters the Wonkavator, a multi-directional glass elevator that flies out of the factory. During their flight, Wonka tells Charlie that he created the contest to find someone worthy enough to inherit his factory, so he will give it to Charlie and his family upon retiring.

## Cast

**Gene Wilder** as Willy Wonka

**Jack Albertson** as Grandpa Joe

**Peter Ostrum** as Charlie Bucket

**Roy Kinnear** as Henry Salt

**Julie Dawn Cole** as Veruca Salt

**Leonard Stone** as Sam Beauregarde

**Denise Nickerson** as Violet Beauregarde

**Dodo Denney** as Mrs. Teevee

**Paris Themmen** as Mike Teevee

**Ursula Reit** as Mrs. Gloop

**Michael Böllner** as Augustus Gloop

**Rudy Borgstaller**, **George Claydon**, **Malcolm Dixon**, **Rusty Goffe**, **Ismed Hassan**, **Norman McGlen**, **Angelo Muscat**, **Pepe Poupee**, **Marcus Powell** & **Albert Wilkinson** as the Oompa-Loompas

**Günter Meisner** as Arthur Slugworth / Mr. Wilkinson