Well, I think the OP is right, considering that Charlie allied with Willy’s brother Glenn, and started imposing cold-hearted business moves like switching to cheap Mexican chocolate…
He does deserve a pass because once he found the golden ticket, he offered to sell it and give the money to his family.
I think it’s pretty clear that Charlie would be just a figurehead CEO, with Grandpa Joe (and possibly Willy himself) as silent partners, and it’s the Oompa Loompas who really run things. I mean, for cripes sake…he’s what, twelve?
What really gets me is this. In the Burton film at least, Charlie’s house appears to be located on an EXTREMELY valuable plot of land. Right in the heart of downtown, taking up an entire block!! (No wonder they were so poor, the property taxes must have been killer.)
I haven’t seen the Burton movie but I was suspect of the Gene Wilder version. Wonka picked Charlie because is a plain vanilla version of someone who will continue to do thing as they are.
Charlie has no accumin to run the factory. He will be a molded little clone of Wonka himself.
Accumen. (Sorry. Grammar Nazi moment.)
That’s what I thought, too. Sure, the other kids were pretty terrible and Charlie is a decent, honest kid, but realistically? Charlie will shut up and do as he’s told, because he’s the one who idolizes Wonka’s vision the most–he won’t dare tamper with a single detail.
The problem with Roald Dahl is that the other kids are just so nasty you absolutely can’t find any redeeming traits about them, or want them to run the factory instead. He’s a great writer, just really… black and white.
And my spellchecker says ‘acumen’, so I humbly shut up and bugger off now. 
What fiasco with the grandparents? It’s been more than twenty years since I read the book (and the Great Glass Elevator) but I don’t remember this bit.
Y’know, with all this talk of Veruca Salt, I went to IMDb to see if I could find a picture of her. Well, her profile page doesn’t have one (though there might be one of her on the movie’s page… Was she the redhead?), but it does have an… interesting… piece of information. In addition to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory in 1971, and several other works afterwards, she also apparently hosted a TV show in 1955. Talk about not looking your age…
Neat feat since her birthday is listed as 1957.
The show lasted until 1984. She presumably hosted it in the 80s.
Probably a whoosh on my part, but imdb lists TV shows by the year they started. Crackerjack ran well into the 1980’s, but it first went on the air in 1955, so that’s the date that it gets listed as for everybody who was ever in it. Granted most other cast members have a note by their name mentioning exactly what years they were on, but Julie Dawn Cole doesn’t.
Here’s how I see things shaking out.
Never mind the contest. That was only to identify the personality traits in each child. Veruca is you COO. She’s running things. Charlie is the CEO, but like above, he’s just a figurehead. Augustus is Outside Sales Manager. Keep him as far away from the Chocolate River as possible. Mike is the Comm & Mktg Director. Violet can handle Inside Sales. You give Grandpa a seat on the Board, along with a token Oompa-Loompa. Make sure he’s in Veruca’s pocket, though, to keep Grandpa, Charlie and Willie from causing any kind of mischief. The other kids obviously are going to despise Charlie, so they shouldn’t get much traction on the Board.
I’m also taking the Saturday Night Live sketch as canonical, so the CFO is Willie’s brother, played by Alec Baldwin.
Al Gore
“The toilets on the third floor are made of Graham crackers! Explain that!”
Corporate facists, the lot of them.
The Oompa-Loompas should have staged a strike, demanding that the chocolate factory be turned into a worker-owned and -managed collective, allowing only fair-trade organic cocoa to be used in the production of candy, the profits of which would have been used to provide housing and education for the young Loompas, ensuring them a better life outside the world of candy-making.
Power to the people … er, Loompas.
And we keep Willy around as head of R&D?
If there’s a whoosh there, it’s on me. I didn’t realize (though I probably should have) that TV shows were listed by first air date, and that a person’s appearance on the show might be years later. I figured it was just a mistake, possibly from some other older actress with a similar name.
Shouldn’t that be Spelling Nazi?
And why weren’t the Oompa Loompas wearing hairnets? I don’t want to bite into a Wonka bar and get a mouthful of green hair.
Even Gene Wilder’s version seemed like a fey fellow to me. Perhaps it’s more a matter of finding a life partner and seeing the world?
Julie Dawn Cole was in a drama/soap about nurses, called Angels. That’s what I remember her from most of all, because my Mother used to love watching that show.
Oh great, sure. But when Charlie runs the company into the ground, all of the Oompa Loompas will be out of work refugees from a 4th world country. Then the UN’ll get involved, and before you know it, they’re resettling Loompas by the busload outside of Chico. Restless and disaffected Loomp youth will join gangs, be recruited by radical terrorist groups, there’ll be rashes of anti-Snozzwanger hate crimes, increased domestic pressure by Loompalanists to reestablish a “Oompa Homeland” in the former Loompaland territory—once the native Whangdoodle population has been “resettled”…
A total quagmire all around. Better to let Slugworth have his way with Wonka’s company. Our economy depends on it.
Another thing: the Oompa-Loompas are illegal immigrants. I haven’t seem the Burton film, but the book explicitly states that Wonka smuggled the Oompa-Loompas into the country. Also, I don’t remember the book mentioning anything about Slugworth stealing Wonka’s secrets. As I remember it (it’s been a while) the company just went out of business, and then some time later it mysteriously started up again, but no one knew who was working there.
It’s hard to come to any conclusion other than that the Oompa-Loompas are slaves. They probably don’t get any pay other than room and board, and they obviously aren’t allowed out of the factory, since no one in the city has any clue that they’re there.
Willy Wonka is an evil, evil man. Maybe it would be for the best if Slugworth took over the company. He’d probably use a legal labor force, who presumably would get paid and would be at liberty to go home at the end of the day.