[Sources can be found at the bottom of the article.]







1/15. The opening credits sequence was filmed at a real chocolate factory in Switzerland.

2/15. After reading the script, Gene Wilder said he would take the role of Willy Wonka under one condition: that he would be allowed to limp, then suddenly somersault in the scene when he first meets the children. When the director asked why, Wilder replied that having Wonka do this meant that "from that time on, no one will know if I'm lying or telling the truth." The director asked, "If I say no, you won't do the picture?", and Wilder said "I'm afraid that's the truth.

3/15. When Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder) drinks from a flower-shaped cup and then eats the cup, the cup itself was made of wax. Wilder had to chew the wax pieces until the end of the take, at which point he spat them out.

4/15. The Wonkatania was on a track in the chocolate river, but the actor playing the Oompa Loompa at the helm thought he was actually steering it. For the sake of believability, director Mel Stuart didn't tell him the truth.

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5/15. The chocolate river was made from 150,000 gallons of water, real chocolate and cream. Because of the cream it began to spoil and, by the end of filming, smelled terrible.

6/15. The reactions of the actors in some scenes are spontaneous. For example, when the children first enter the Chocolate Room and see the candy gardens, their reactions are real, it was really their first view of that particular set.

7/15. Ernst Ziegler, who played Grandpa George, was nearly blind (from poison gas in the First World War), so he was instructed to look for a red light to guide him when his character was meant to be looking in a certain direction.

8/15. Peter Ostrum (Charlie Bucket) made no other films. He later became a veterinarian. In fact, of all the children in this movie, Julie Dawn Cole (Veruca Salt) is the only one still acting.

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9/15. Gene Wilder's acting during the boat ride sequence was so convincing that it frightened some of the other actors, including Denise Nickerson (Violet). They thought that Wilder really was going mad from being in the tunnel.

10/15. This movie was shot in Munich, Germany, but the producers had to go outside of Germany to recruit enough little people to play the Oompa Loompas (one of the many tragic legacies of the Nazi era). Many of the people cast as Oompa Loompas (German or otherwise) did not speak English fluently, if at all. This is why some appear to not know the words to songs during the musical numbers.

11/15. Julie Dawn Cole (Veruca Salt) did not know the rock in the chocolate room she was dropping down onto to smash the watermelon-sized chocolate egg was real and she badly cut her left knee falling onto it. If you watch carefully in her first scene with the egg you can see her left stocking is bloody. She still has a scar on her knee from the injury.

12/15. One of the ten actors who played the Oompa Loompas was a female.

13/15. The combination to the first door in the chocolate factory is 99-44-100% pure, which was an ad slogan for Ivory Soap products.

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14/15. The song Wonka sings on the boat ride ("There's no earthly way of knowing... ") is the only song lyric taken directly from Roald Dahl's book. All other songs were written specifically for the film.

15/15. The coin which Charlie finds in the gutter is a Maria Theresa Thaler. This is a silver dollar sized Austrian coin originally minted in 1780 and manufactured almost continuously since then by various mints.

(Source)

Continue to the next page for 5 bonus facts about the film!

1/5. Denise Nickerson (Violet Beauregarde) didn't want to do the nose-picking bit. She had a crush on Peter Ostrum (Charlie Bucket) and didn't want to embarrass herself.

2/5. Sammy Davis Jr. wanted to play Bill, the candy store owner, but Stuart didn't like the idea because he felt that the presence of a big star in the candy store scene would break the reality. Nevertheless, the candy store song, "The Candy Man," became a staple of Davis' stage show for many years.

3/5. Director Mel Stuart initially wanted to reveal that Willy Wonka had strategically placed the golden tickets in order to give the factory to Charlie. The idea was dropped, but the hints remained in the fact that Mr. Wilkinson (aka "Slugworth") conveniently showed up every time a ticket was uncovered.

4/5. The Quaker Oats food company financed the movie, because they wanted to promote a new line of chocolate bars they were about to launch. So they named it the Wonka Bar and then chose to name the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory as a promotional tie-in.

5/5. Most of the chocolate bars in the movie were mad out of wood!







(Source 1), (Source 2)