#Headlines: Willy Wonka’s Hidden Nazi Joke

Anyone who watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory as a kid remembers the movie’s immense weirdness, the streaks of darkness that run through it like a layer of fudge in cake, and the crushing disappointment of Charlie Bucket when the last golden ticket has been found. According to the news report in the film, “a gambler in Paraguay” found the ticket, ending the contest. The news anchor holds up a picture of the lucky winner, an old-fashioned studio portrait of a doughy but well-dressed man. 

Only later, after Charlie’s spirits have begun to rebound and he has bought Grandpa Joe a Wonka bar, do we learn that the last ticket was a forgery and the contest is still on. 

“Can you imagine the nerve of that guy?” a man looking at the headline reporting the fraud says. “Trying to fool the whole world?” 

There’s a joke lost in the shuffle here, one that was certainly lost on me as a kid wondering why the first four winners were children whom we met and learned a little about while the fifth was a middle-aged man in a photo: our shady South American gambler is Martin Bormann.

Willy Wonka’s Hidden Nazi Joke 
jordanmposs.com/blog (May 2, 2020)