Dahl wanted Charlie to be a black boy
ROALD Dahl originally wrote the lead character of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to be ‘a little black boy’, his widow revealed yesterday.
Despite both film versions of the tale and Quentin Blake’s illustrations portraying Charlie Bucket as white with fair hair, Liccy Dahl said that was never his 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.’
Asked why that had been changed, she said: ‘I don’t know. It’s a great pity.’
Dahl’s biographer, Donald Sturrock, said his agent changed the author’s mind before the book’s publication in 1964. He said: ‘I can tell you it was his agent who thought it was a bad idea to have a black hero. She said people would ask ‘‘why’’.’