Roald Dahl originally wrote the lead character of his much-loved children’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to be ‘a little black boy’, his widow has revealed.
Despite every film version of the tale, and Quentin Blake’s illustrations, portraying Charlie Bucket as white with a crop of fair hair, Liccy Dahl said yesterday that was never her late husband’s intention.
Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme to mark Roald Dahl Day, she said: ‘His first Charlie that he wrote about was a little black boy, and I’m sure that was influenced by America.’
Gene Wilder (left) as Willy Wonka and Peter Ostrum (right) as Charlie Bucket in the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Asked why that had been changed, she said: ‘I don’t know. It’s a great pity.’
Dahl’s biographer, Donald Sturrock, suggested that Dahl’s agent thought it was a bad idea.
He said: ‘I can tell you that, it was his agent who thought it was a bad idea, when the book was first published, to have a black hero. She said people would ask why.’
Roald Dahl originally wrote the lead character of his book to be ‘a little black boy’
Presenter Sarah Montague suggested that the story could now be rewritten to revert to a black character, to which Mrs Dahl said: ‘It would be wonderful wouldn’t it?’
The revelation of Dahl’s intentions for his young hero in his 1964 novel comes despite the fact that the original version of the story prompted allegations of racism, over the Oompa Loompa characters being black pygmies from Africa.
Dahl, who died in 1990, explained that this had not been his intention and changed the book in time for the US edition to say that the Oompa Loompa’s were instead from a fictional place.
In the 1971 film, starring Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka and Peter Ostrum as Charlie, the Oompa Loompas had orange skin and green hair to save any offence.
The Bookseller said last year that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory remains the biggest-selling book of Dahl’s, selling 990,711 copies.