Julie Dawn Cole - I Want it Now! A Memoir of Life on the Set of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

with

Michael Esslinger

This book is dedicated to the memory of my mum, and the futures of Holly India, and Barney.

I Want it Now!

A Memoir of Life on the Set of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

By Julie Dawn Cole with Michael Esslinger

Copyright 2011, Julie Dawn Cole

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including informational storage or retrieval systems without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Digital eBook Version:

Ocean View Publishing

P.O. Box 222317

Carmel, CA 93922

USA Print Version:

BearManor Media

P. O. Box 1129

Duncan, OK 73534-1129

www.BearManorMedia.com

ISBN: 1-59393-074-7

ISBN13: 978-1-59393-074-5

All photographs, press releases, letters, documents and illustrations are courtesy of the following sources: Julie Dawn Cole, Paramount Pictures, Warner Brothers Entertainment, 20th Century Fox Entertainment, Walt Disney Pictures, Springtime Productions, Culver City Pictures, ABC Network, MGM Records, Surrey Advertiser, iStockphoto and Joe Maddalena with Hollywood Treasures.

No biographies within this book have been authorized or endorsed, implied or otherwise by those persons named or associated except for the author.

Original Book Design and Composition by John Reinhardt

Original Book Cover Design by Jim Zach

eBook Design by Joshua Tallent

Introductory Note

Who would have thought that after almost 40 years, people would still be interested in the kids from Willy Wonka? As wide-eyed, enthusiastic adolescents, we all happened to be at the right place at the right time to be part of something special. As Charlie, I have fond memories of my brief cinematic career. I couldnt have shared it with a better group of young professionals. However, Julie will always have a special place in my heart for her performance as Veruca Salt. I was awestruck when I heard her sing I Want It Now! It was definitely the musical high point for the film.

As Willy Wonka said, and I concur, A thing of beauty is a joy forever. I actually think he was describing Julies performance.

With great affection,

Peter Ostrum

Charlie Bucket

In June 1971, I was living in a suburb just outside of Hollywood. When Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory made its theatrical premiere, I was one of the kids excitedly waiting in line for a good seat, and when I finally entered the theaterbag of popcorn and candy in handI had no idea that when the movie ended and the lights came up, I would walk away transformed. For me, it was a journey of epic proportions; perhaps no other story played a more important role during my formative years.

In a very real sense, my life has been shaped by the world of cinema and in many ways, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was a prominent engineer of my own morals. Charlie Bucket, a quintessential compass of good character, embodied the enduring truth that making the right decision is often the hardest. Nevertheless, it was the abstract idea of Willy Wonka that touched my heart, as it has the hearts of many whove watched it. What made this film legendary was that audiences saw little parts of themselves in each of the characters. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is an archetypal flight of imaginationan adventure like no other.

Julie Dawn Cole, who played the nasty Veruca Salt in the movie, offers a rare glimpse behind the stage curtain, chronicling the journey that helped bring Roald Dahls classic story to the screen. Julies portrayal of the spoiled material girl is dead on, but when we began working together, I found that there is barely a trace of Veruca in her own life; her character rendering was in complete opposition to her own personality. Where did she find Veruca Salt? I can only conclude that it was her love of the theater and ability to tap into a difficult childhood that brought forth such a convincing portrayal.

Some of the most seasoned filmmakers of that era placed Julie in the same class as the young Judy Garland. Frawley Becker, who in his prolific career worked behind the camera with an iconic list of stars that included Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Ann-Margaret, Peter OToole, Omar Sharif, Christopher Plummer, and Audrey Hepburn, once commented that her amazing voice in Willy Wonka resonates in your ear long after the picture ends. Walter Scharf, another Hollywood veteran nominated for no less than ten Academy Awards, expressed a similar opinion of Julies memorable performance. Perhaps the most satisfying compliment came from the movies director. In a 2003 interview, when Mel Stuart was asked about his favorite memory of the film, he said simply that it was Julies performance.

***

In the early 1970s, Hollywoods Sunset Boulevard was lined with stores that sold movie memorabilia and specialty books. I have long been an aficionado of these on-location and the making of books because they give the reader a peek into magic worlds in which characters and visual poems are engineered by human imagination. What was essentially a very practical process in terms of writing and production seemed to have magical elements that surfaced when projected on the screen.

A young boy with an unquenchable curiosity, I went to extreme measures to catch a glimpse of the process. At MGM, for example, several of the soundstages were closely adjacent to the public sidewalk on Washington Boulevard. A simple peek into one of these massive structures offered glimpses of both the exotic and the mundane. A grand sense of movement and excitement resonate from these sets; music, thunderous sound effects, and singing gave background to the noise of snapping hammers as sets were built and something extraordinary was created. These were the soundstages where The Wizard of Oz had been filmed, and though it was thirty years after the fact, I still expected to find a young Judy Garland sipping tea with her Oz co-stars between takes.

While one could argue that the words magic and magical are overused in this book, it is indeed pure magic to get an inside look at such a legendary film directly from someone who participated in its creation. When the opportunity came to work with Julie and to learn more about one of my all-time favorite movies, I jumped at the chance.