Willy Wonka Actors You May Not Know Passed Away

A full half-century after the film's release, it's hard to imagine "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory" as anything other than the beloved timeless classic that it's become. But when it opened in 1971, it was far from a box-office success, barely pulling $4 million in for a film that cost $3 million to make. Neither the actors nor the characters were household names, and Roald Dahl, the writer of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," absolutely hated the movie adaptation. But time heals all wounds, and, over the decades, "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory" found its way into fan's hearts and unexpectedly durable pop-culture relevance. 

Still, that didn't stop Hollywood from trying again in 2005, this time securing director Tim Burton and the blessing of Dahl's family to re-adapt the book more faithfully into "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." Though it hasn't quite warmed hearts like the original, Burton's quirky vision has its share of fans in its own right. The 1971 film may seem eternal, and the 2005 adaptation may seem like it just happened yesterday, but "time," as Wonka admonishes Veruca Salt, "is a precious thing." It never stops marching forward. Sadly, over the years, we've lost a number of beloved actors from the Chocolate Factory. So to help keep track of those we've lost, here are some actors who you may not know passed away. 

Willy Wonka can say whatever he likes at the end of the film about Slugworth working for him, but generations of children know that this bespectacled faux spy will always be nightmare fuel. He appears like a wraith in dark alleys and whispers sinister nothings into children's ears — and just how the hell was he always able to show up whenever someone found a Golden Ticket? The man couldn't have even been human. Wonka was wrong; Slugworth was most definitely someone to be fear.

And while Slugworth may have succeeded in scaring generations of children, over the course of his career, the man who gave him creepy life, Günter Meisner, scared a good number of adults, too. Sinister and threatening was a niche the character actor had mastered. He was never afraid to take on villains and Nazis, even playing Hitler a time or two, like in ABC's 1983 mini-series, "The Winds of War." And since Meisner was fluent in English, French, and German, he got his pick of roles the world over. He appeared in big-budget all-star fare like 1976's WWII era drama "The Voyage of the Damned," and made himself right at home in 1978's Hitler clone thriller "The Boys From Brazil." The man died of a heart attack in 1994 while filming the German procedural show "Tatort" at the age of 68.

It always seemed a bit odd that a teacher like Mrs. Teavee would be so indulgent of her son's crippling television addiction, but indulge it she did. But then, maybe she was just giving in to the inevitability of having a son named Mike Teavee. The role almost went to Jean Stapleton, but when she turned it down to star in "All in the Family," actress Nora Denney picked it up without missing a beat. She provided Mrs. Teavee with just the right amount of indulgence and pretentiousness, playing a geography teacher whose know-it-all attitude gets casually brushed aside by Wonka. (Though who can blame her for not knowing where the Oompa Loompas came from, or that they existed at all?)

Before delighting kids in "Willy Wonka," Denney got her start scaring them as Marilyn the Witch, host of Kansas City, Missouri's horror movie show, "The Witching Hour." Back then, she went by Dolores Denney, before shortening her name to Dodo and finally settling on Nora. She made a slew of television appearances throughout the '60s and '70s, bouncing around between hits like "Bewitched," "Green Acres," and "Starsky & Hutch." She even had a small role in Tom Hanks' "Splash" before finally slowing down a bit. Denney lived a full life, though, and died just before Thanksgiving in November of 2005.

In the 50 years since "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory" came out, few characters have remained as stubbornly enigmatic as Willy Wonka himself. He seems, at times, both callously unconcerned and warmly encouraging. He delights in showing off his oddities, but it's always hard to tell when he's lying and when he's telling the truth. And that was all famously intentional. As portrayer Gene Wilder explained, he took the role by insisting Wonka's entrance be used to throw the audience off and leave them guessing the rest of the movie whether he was trustworthy or not.

Wilder, of course, was one of Hollywood's great comic geniuses, making classics like Mel Brooks' "The Producers" and "Young Frankenstein," and working with fellow funnyman Richard Pryor on films like "Silver Streak" and "Stir Crazy." Though his last appearance on the big screen had been in 1991's "Another You" with Pryor, and he hadn't appeared on television since a 2003 episode of "Will & Grace," Wilder's star never faded. So when he died on August 29, 2016, of Alzheimer's complications, fans mourned the passing of an old, cherished friend. And just to prove how kind a man Hollywood really lost, it was only after his passing that fans learned he'd hid his Alzheimer's from the world for years, not wanting the truth to rob his young fans of one second of happiness.

Of all the naughty children from "Willy Wonka," Violet Beauregarde may be the most likable. Sure, they're all varying degrees of defiantly obnoxious (except maybe for poor, oblivious Augustus Gloop), but as far as vices go, gum chewing is pretty benign. Yeah, there's also that competitive streak, but Violet manages to give voice to the people when she snaps at the unbearable Veruca Salt to "Can it, you nit!" Of course, dismissing a grotesquely spoiled brat is one thing, and dismissing the man trying to keep you from eating a potentially lethal experimental "meal" is another. Maybe next time, at least, Violet will know how to keep from turning into a giant blueberry.

Actress Denise Nickerson brought Violet to lip-smacking, gum-chewing, nose-picking life. She got her start in soaps, playing a few connected roles in the time-hopping, supernatural anomaly, "Dark Shadows." She moved to "Search for Tomorrow" after, then joined "The Electric Company" as one of the members of the band Short Circus. Her last role before she retired from acting was in the 1978 comedy "Zero to Sixty" with Joan Collins and Dick Martin. Nickerson always held Violet close to her heart, though, showing up for documentaries, reunions, and fan events, and remaining close to a number of her co-stars. She was, sadly, the first of the children we lost, as she died of pneumonia in July 2019 at just 62.

While the 2005 Burton adaptation didn't exactly bring a slew of new characters, it did bring a number of new interpretations to characters viewers thought they knew well. Charlie's beloved Grandpa Joe, of course, still accompanies his grandson to the chocolate factory, but this Grandpa Joe seems a bit less stubborn and pushy than his counterpart in "Willy Wonka." And while the 1971 version was a believable older man (Jack Albertson, the one-time household name who died in 1981, was just 64 when he played Grandpa Joe), Burton's film version seemed much closer to the uncannily sprightly 96-year-old that Roald Dahl wrote about in his novel. 

Veteran Irish actor David Kelly put the spring in Grandpa Joe's step, an easy enough task for a man who'd been acting on stage and screen for five decades by then. Throughout his career, Kelly made memorable appearances in British fare like John Cleese's "Fawlty Towers" and big-screen movies like "Waking Ned Devine." As the Irish Times noted on his death in February of 2012, Kelly had made quite a career out of playing characters older than himself. Though older than Albertson, he was still only 76 when "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" came out. Who better to breathe some extra life into the ancient Grandpa Joe?

Since Burton put so much stock into remaining faithful to Roald Dahl's novel, it seemed odd to tackle a whole new back story for Willy Wonka complete with an entirely new character: dour dad, Wilbur Wonka. But odd is what Burton does, so Wilbur made his presence known in "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." Wonka's father was a renowned dentist with a totalitarian streak, forbidding his son from eating Halloween candy and ruining his teeth. Once Wonka got a taste of the sweet stuff, though, he was hooked, so he ran off to follow his dreams. By the time he tried to return, he'd found his father, too, had run off — with the entire house. 

Burton chose towering, record-breaking film legend Christopher Lee to play Wonka's imposing father, giving him just the right amount of menace and vulnerability. Lee, of course, was a Hollywood legend, with a career dating back to his days as Dracula in the Hammer Horror films of the '50s and '60s. Lee also fought Roger Moore's James Bond as the assassin Scaramanga in "The Man With the Golden Gun," and betrayed the forces of good as Saruman in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy. He worked right up until the end of his life, playing Saruman one more time in 2014's "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies." Lee died a year later in June of 2015, shortly after his 93rd birthday.

The role of adults in Roald Dahl's stories is always a little grotesque, and the world of teachers and education is even more so. While "Willy Wonka" doesn't sink to the depraved depths of "Matilda," for example, we do get a sense of Charlie's fraught school career in the form of Mr. Turkentine (David Battley), a not-terribly-bright math and science teacher who talks down to his students, capriciously changes weekly schedules without warning, and exposes his students to combustible chemicals. When the news breaks that Willy Wonka is reopening his factory via five golden tickets hidden amongst the world's supply of Wonka bars, Mr. Turkentine dismisses class so that everyone (himself included) can join the hunt.

The son of Labour politician John Battley, David attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and made a name for himself as a deadpan comic actor, notching roles on "The Benny Hill Show," "Mr. Bean," and the 1966 BBC adaptation of "Alice in Wonderland." Aside from "Willy Wonka," Battley's was most well known for the 1975 sketch comedy series "Rutland Weekend Television." Created by Monty Python's Eric Idle, the two-season show was a parody of low-budget local television programming; animated sequences featured a Beatles-like group called The Rutles, with Battley voicing Paul McCartney stand-in Stig O'Hara. Battley continued to work up through the 1990s and died of a heart attack in 2003.

In 1972, the year after "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" premiered, singer Sammy Davis, Jr. went to the top of the charts for the first time as a solo artist with his rendition of Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse's "The Candy Man." But the first recorded version of the song can be found on the film's official soundtrack album, sung — as it was in the film — by actor Aubrey Woods in character as candy store owner Bill. He spends his days doling out Scrumdiddlyumptious bars and the like, schooling his young customers on the finer points of the confectionery business. Through his song, we learn that there is a bit of magic inside anyone who provides candy to the world, and that Willy Wonka is a cut above the rest.

A veteran actor of stage, screen, and radio, Woods was a graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, like his castmate David Battley. On stage, he played Shakespeare opposite such luminaries as Sir Ralph Richardson and Paul Scofield. He played Fagin in "Oliver!" for three years on the West End in the 1960s, and in 1991 he was in a celebrated production of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat." On the big screen he racked up 100 film and television credits across six decades, including multiple Charles Dickens adaptations for the BBC, Michael Pertwee's 1974 sex farce "Don't Just Lie There, Say Something!" and the four-part "Doctor Who" event "Day of the Daleks" in 1972. Woods' last on-screen credit was a 1995 episode of the firefighter drama "London's Burning;" he died of natural causes in 2013 at age 85.

Amazingly, Eileen Essell wasn't the only Bucket house bedmate who started a film career in their golden years. As Grandpa George, David Morris is the temperamental opposite of Grandpa Joe, hard-headed and practical while Joe is kind and whimsical. Yet it is George who convinces Charlie to use the golden ticket rather than sell it for a much-needed fortune, arguing persuasively that the experience of a lifetime is worth far more than money.

Before he became a professional actor, Morris was an artist and lecturer. After serving in World War II, young Morris studied art in France and later taught at Oxford, Brighton, London, and the Royal Academy Schools for two decades. His experiences in the war, including the death of his brother, also turned him into a dedicated pacifist and activist; he helped organize the first Artists for Peace show for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Over the years Morris became an avid actor, staging amateur productions at his home; one of the directors he worked with, Sandy Johnson, recommended him for a role on a 2004 episode of the BBC mystery series "Jonathan Creek." And with that, Morris' professional acting career began at age 79. He appeared on episodes of the Matt Lucas sketch series "Little Britain" and the Steve Coogan comedy "Saxondale," and his final performance was in the 2008 horror-comedy "Flick." Sadly, his second career as a working actor was short-lived; Morris died in 2007 at age 83.