The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 610

71 it Can Creativity and Commercial Tie-up Coexist? BY ARTHUR KNIGHT KM i Is' i4 I colate Factory," now filming in Germany, is ing financed entirely by Quaker Oo's. Dovic Wolper's "Willy Wonka and the It is scarcely a trade secret any longer that most of Hollywood's major studios have run out of money. A few weeks ago, 20th Century-Fox followed Metro's fead in auctioning off its stock of movie memorabilia, while during this past year MGM has been copying the Fox pattern by selling great chunks of its fabled back lot to the real estate developers. Production has been slashed to the bone, and studio staffs to the marrow. But Hollywood is every bit as fabulous an invalid as the theater ever was.

Despite the cutbacks, movies continue to be made and the sources of financing them these days are sometimes surprising. Robert Radnitz, who has specialized in producing such family entertainments as "A Dog of Flanders" and "My Side of the Mountain." recently signed a three-picture deal with Mattel Toys for more of the same. At the start of the year, General Electric announced the formation of subsidiary to back film production. And rapidly nearing completion at the moment is David Wolper's "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," its $3 million budget supplied completely by Quaker Oats. "Willy Wronka and the Chocolate Factory," of course, is really "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," Roald Dahl's enormously popular children's book.

First published in 1964, the fantasy caught on immediately, and has since been translated into at least 15 languages. The title change for the movie was probably made to give greater emphasis to its star, Gene Wilder, but the people at Wolper's are not Cons'1' a "We were able to find everything we needed in and around Munich" cerned about any lack of identification "All you. have to do is mention 'Choco- late says producer Stan Mar-gulies, "and everybody immediately knows you mean Charlie's." To play Charlie, a prolonged talent produced 12-year-old Peter Os-trum. of Cleveland. Tests revealed him to be the perfect embodiment of Dahl's youthful hero "honest, obedient, loy-id, trustworthy, brave, good, kind and Shooting began in Munich last September in a studio that the U.S.

Army-had occupied immediately after World War II, a clearing in a forest with the improbable name of Geiselgasteig. The stages themselves antedated the American take over by at. least a decade, but modern soundproofing plus a generous influx of American equipment has made them as efficient and effective as their Hollywood counterparts. Why, in that case, didn't they shoot in Hollywood? Mel Stuart, the director, has an answer to that. "We needed a place," he said, "where we could supplement our fairy-tale interiors with fairy-tale exteriors.

We needed a place where we could leave the studio and, in less than half an hour, find marvelous text," replied Robert N. Thurston, the company's vice president for corporate affairs. "That's an undesirable practice on Broadway or in films. We do, however, expect to use our merchandising capabilities in a way that will benefit the film, and vice versa. "Our primary objective, both in the film and in the several television specials that David Wolper is also producing for us," Thurston continued, "is to use our resources to help create programming of exceptionally high quality for all family viewing.

As a marketer of consumer products, we believe that the public will respond favorably to those companies which show a genuine concern for quality in the entertainment media with which the company and its products are associated." Whatever this may mean in terms of promoting either the film or "Wonka's SCRUMDIDILYUMPTIOUS Bar" or both remains to be seen. What is already notably apparent, however, is the fact that once the basic property had been selected and approved, Quaker Oats retired from the scene and left all the creative decisions to Wolper and his staff. Apart from Robert Newman, an old studio hand at production management appointed by Quaker Oats to keep an eye on the finances, everyone in Munich was directly responsible to Wolper alone. Mel Stuart, the intense, bespectacled director of "Willy Wonka" (and of "If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium" and "I Love My Wife," also for Wolper), readily confirmed this. "There has been absolutely no interference from Quaker Oats," he declared.

"The artistic decisions are left completely in our hands. They will certainly help to promote the picture, but that's because they want to make money on the film, not on its by-products." These artistic decisions including Please Turn to Page 31 small children who crowded into the store, a loudspeaker played over and over again a Leslie Bricusse-Anthony Newley song (one of six written for the picture) extolling the virtues of "The Candy Man." Propelling himself along on a rolling ladder, Mr. Bill (Aubrey Wood) was tossing out great handfuls of goodies jelly beans, candy corn, multicolored popcorn to the kids below, meanwhile mouthing the words to a playback he had recorded earlier and leaping gracefully from ladder to counter to floor and back again. While all of this was going on for perhaps the sixth time, I found myself standing offstage beside the cartons of candies that would serve as replacements for each new outburst of Mr. Bill's prodigality.

Suddenly, I noticed a candy bar that I had never seen before 12 inches of chocolate labeled "Won- Once the basic property had been approved, Quaker Oats retired from the scene ka's SCRUMD1D1LYUMPTIOUS Bar." Peering closer, I read in the fine print, "Manufactured by Quaker Oats." Had Quaker Oats gone into the movie business in order to introduce a new candy bar? If so, it seemed quite an expensive form of advertising. Back in the States again, I contacted the Quaker Oats people in Chicago. Do they contemplate any commercial tie-ups or direct exploitation of Quaker Oats products in the film? "Not in sense that it shows Quaker products in the established 'prop' con enchanted forests and fantastic Old World city streets. 'Willy Wonka' doesn't take place in any specific locale, but we were able to find everything we needed in or around Munich." I happened to be with them one afternoon when, after a day's shooting in a classroom re-created on a studio sound stage, the unit broke at about 3 in the afternoon. They piled into trucks and cars, and sure enough, within 30 minutes they were setting up again in the shadows of some graceful arcades in Munich's center city.

It was for the sequence in which Charlie discovers that he has just bought a chocolate bar containing the coveted Golden Ticket that will admit him to Willy Wonka's factory, and races home to tell his Grandpa Joe (Jack Albertson). The script called for a series of "run-bys" a montage of shots of young Ostrum tearing gleefully through the streets. As luck would have it, the late afternoon sun was partially screened by clouds, bursting forth only intermittently. The cameraman, veteran Arthur Ibbetson, stopped down his lens for a minimum reading; but just as Charlie was dashing through the arcade toward the camera, the sun suddenly streamed across his face, producing an effect of boundless joy. A short while later, by moving the camera only a few hundred yards clown the arcade, the crew was able to capture an altogether different kind of setting a narrow, cobbled street lined with small, picturesque shops and with Charlie this time running away from the camera.

In a single day, they had covered three totally different locales. The next day's shooting was back at the studio, a musical sequence set in a candy store generously stocked from floor" to ceiling with all manner of sweets. Above the din of the dozens of.