10 Insane Movie Facts Nobody Believes
8. Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory's Casting Was Severely Affected By The Holocaust
Despite Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory being released 26 years after the end of World War II, the events of the Holocaust had a most unexpected effect on the film's casting efforts for its Oompa-Loompas.
The movie was shot in Munich, Germany in 1970, and though the filmmakers originally assumed they'd be able to cast local dwarf actors to portray the Oompa-Loompas, the Holocaust had resulted in such a large number of the country's dwarf population being killed that they struggled to find many.
As a result, the production instead flew in little people from other surrounding countries to fill out the numbers, as created additional issues given that many of them consequently didn't speak English, making communication challenging.
That an historical atrocity created a production hurdle for a movie made an entire quarter-century later is surely something few would've ever naturally considered - if perhaps also because so few know that the movie was filmed in Germany at all.