Violet Beauregarde is a fictional character from the Roald Dahl novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the subsequent film adaptations.
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Background
Violet Beauregarde is the third of the five children to find one of Willy Wonka's elusive Golden Tickets, and the second to be kicked off the tour. She exhibits a more competitive spirit than the four other ticket winners, especially in the 2005 movie, in which her ambitious behavior is greatly expanded to include her participation in sports and martial arts. Violet is also a notoriously relentless gum chewer, though she temporarily curbed her habit in order to focus on Wonka Bars and search for the ticket.
It ought to be noted that aside from Charlie, Violet is arguably the most redeemable of the four other children on Wonka's tour. For example, in both the novel and the 2005 film she is the only child other than Charlie to find a Golden Ticket the way the contest had intended (Augustus had a diet consisting entirely of chocolate and thus found it easily; Veruca had her father order his workers to find the Golden Ticket for her; and Mike merely studied the bar codes on the chocolate bars to accurately predict where the next one would be). In the 1971 film, however, Mike found one this way as well.Violet is a competitive gum chewer.
Violet in the novel
Violet is described in the novel as having a "great big mop of curly hair" and as someone who talks "very fast and very loudly." Like Augustus Gloop and Veruca Salt, her nationality is never touched upon in the book, but she is depicted as American in both films (from Montana in the 1971 film and Atlanta, Georgia in the 2005 film). Both her parents wind up accompanying her to the factory, though her mother disapproves of Violet's gum-chewing habit. Violet boasts about how she enjoyed sticking chewed gum on elevator buttons so that whoever presses the button next will have gum stuck on their finger.
Violet in the films
In the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, Violet was depicted as a preteen girl from Miles City, Montana, and was played by Denise Nickerson. She dressed in contemporary blue bell-bottom pants, and her brown hair is styled in a sort of ponytail embellished with a giant hair clip. Her father, Sam Beauregarde, is a used car salesman who never misses an opportunity to compete with other car dealers. There is no interaction between Violet and Veruca Salt in the novel, but in the film, the girls are seen pushing and shoving each other when walking down the Chocolate Room stairs. In contrast, Violet gets along fairly well with Charlie.
In the 2005 film adaption, Violet (played by AnnaSophia Robb) is a preteen like in the previous film, but her hometown has been changed to Atlanta, Georgia. She also has a short, blonde pageboy hairstyle along with a fervent competitive streak, having won 263 trophies and medals in various events ranging from martial arts competitions to gum-chewing contests; she is a junior champion and world-record holder in the latter, and had been working on the same piece for three months straight at the time that she had found her Golden Ticket. During the ticket search, she temporarily laid off gum and switched to Wonka Bars, keeping the aforementioned wad stored behind her ear in the meantime. As far as personality goes, she sees all the other kids as contestants to beat. This is evident in the Chocolate Room of the tour after Violet snatches a candy apple from a tree before Charlie does and puts the gum in her ear. He asks her why she doesn't simply start another piece. She replies that she would "be a loser like [him]" if she did.
Violet's mother, Scarlett Beauregarde, is her primary parental figure and factory tour chaperone in the 2005 film. She herself is an award-winning baton twirler (something she makes very obvious in the interview) who also serves as Violet's personal coach, having strong confidence that her daughter is going to win the special prize at the end of the factory tour. She encourages her daughter's bad manners and cocky attitude until they leave the factory.
Violet's Endgame
Willy Wonka invents a gum that is a three-course dinner: tomato soup, roast beef and blueberry pie. Wonka warns her not to chew it. Violet argues that she holds the world record in chewing gum and begins chewing it anyway. She claims it is amazing, but when it reaches the blueberry pie her face begins to turn blue. Soon her entire body turns blue, before expanding like a balloon being blown up and then becoming similar to a large blue ball. Willy tells the Oompa Loompas to roll her to the juicing room to be squeezed of the blueberry juice that had built up inside her.
In the 1971 film, only Violet's face and hands are seen turning blue, as the rest of her body is covered by her clothes (which also happen to be blue), but in the 2005 film, every part of her body turns blue, including her hair, and her clothes turn a deeper shade of blue. In the 1971 film, she only grows in width (so she is rolled sideways), but in the 2005 film, she grows in height as well, becoming nearly ten feet tall (so she is rolled on her head). In both films her clothes stretch to impossible proportions. One thing happened in each of the films [to Violet] that abide by the laws of physics: In the 1971 film, her belt pops off. In the 2005 film, her navel (belly button) is shown. None of this (except the colors) is specified in the novel.
Violet's fate is not visualized in the first film, in which Wonka simply assures Charlie that all the other children will be their normal selves. In the 2005 version, she is seen exiting the factory with her now-disapproving mother after the tour. She has been deflated back to normal size, but rather than walking, she somersaults and backflips down the stairs and the front walk, and her skin and clothes are both a permanent shade of blue, but she is actually pleased with her new form and pliability. In the novel, Violet retains purple skin but there is no mention of increased dexterity.
The filmmakers of the 1971 adaptation simulated the blueberry scene by inflating Nickerson in a rubber suit and made her outline in two halves of a Styrofoam ball. It took forty-five minutes for her to get into her costume. Nickerson was unable to go to lunch during rehearsals; instead she was rolled every five minutes to keep blood circulating. In the 2005 version, at the request of director Tim Burton, the filmmakers combined real pictures of AnnaSophia and computer effects, in order to increase the overall size of the blueberry rather than just the width.
In the 1971 film Violet wears a wide red belt while in the 2005 film she didn't. The belt popped off because her inflating body became too big for it. It flies onto the floor and is not seen again.
Violet Beauregarde Song
In the 2005 version, this song takes place in the Inventing Room, where the multicourse gum was created. It is sung by the Oompa Loompas while Violet is rolling around in blueberry form, and the lyrics contain 42 repetitions of the word "chewing." The track uses the same pitch in voice, accompanied by a '70s funk-style sound. The original song in the novel featured a "Miss Bigelow" who chewed gum day in and day out for years before her jaws bit her tongue in two, and how the Oompa Loompas wanted to prevent the same thing happening to Violet. In the 1971 version, the song merely talks about how chewing gum for long periods of time is repulsive.
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