The story
In 1911, Frank Martoccio's F.A. Martoccio Macaroni Company acquired the defunct Pratt and Langhoft Candy factory. He had initially only wanted to purchase a similar machine to replace one that had burnt out at his own macaroni factory but was talked into acquiring the entire plant and entering the confectionery business. In 1927, he purchased the Pendergast Candy Company of Minneapolis, Minnesota, changing the name of his company to Hollywood Brands in 1933.
In the early 1920s, Pendergast had discovered a method of making a fluffy nougat for candy bars, having added far too many eggs to a batch of German-style dark nougat. They used this for their walnut-flavored Fat Emma bars but the secret was soon out, with Frank and Forrest Mars's Milky Way bars becoming the most successful copycat. Martoccio invented a synthetic coating for his candy bars—particularly the Zero bar—to keep them from melting in warm temperatures, helping their sales in the South before air conditioning became generally available. He used only the very best ingredients—real cocoa butter, eggs, etc. and was still able to sell his milk chocolate bars for 3 cents compared to the 5 cent Hershey bar (1955). That was not continued after the company was sold in 1967.
Hollywood Candy Company moved to Centralia, Illinois, in 1938. During the 1950s, Hollywood owned a Crosley Super Sport, which was painted to look like the Zero candy bar wrapper and employed a midget to impersonate a character called Zero and drive around advertising the candy bar. In 1967, the Martoccio family sold Hollywood Brands to Consolidated Foods, later Sara Lee. The Centralia plant was destroyed in a fire in 1980.
In 1988 Hollywood Brands was acquired by the Leaf Candy Company, then became part of the Hershey Company in 1996.
From Wikipedia’s article on Hollywood Candy Company, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3