Thursday, Feb. 11, 1999 | 10:57 a.m.
One of the business world's most enigmatic leaders quietly lives in Henderson a couple months out of the year while the empire he helped build flourishes worldwide.
Forrest Mars Sr., patriarch of Mars Inc. and the founder of Ethel M Chocolates, which operates a factory in Henderson and retail outlets across the valley, lives in seclusion, shunning publicity about his company as he has his entire life.
But a new book, authored by a former Washington Post financial writer, uncovers some of the veil of secrecy over the company throughout the 20th century.
"The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars," by Joel Glenn Brenner, not only chronicles the exploits of Forrest Mars Sr. -- called "the Howard Hughes of candy" -- but also his company's intense rivalry with Hershey Foods Corp.
Nevadans hoping to glean some insight into the world of Ethel M Chocolates from the book are likely to be disappointed. The book's only reference to the company Mars named after his mother comes on the last page.
But the anecdotes in the footnoted hardcover edition published by Random House show that Forrest Mars -- one of the M's in M&M's -- hasn't changed his philosophy or style since he became the driving force of his father Frank's company in the 1930s.
"I think the Ethel M angle is one of the most interesting parts of the Mars story," Brenner said in a telephone interview.
Brenner said Mars always wanted to be a fine chocolatier and seems to have succeeded with the Ethel M brand which, she says, stands up to the best chocolates of the world.
"He lives in Nevada about two months out of the year -- during hurricane season," Brenner said. "The rest of the time, he's in Miami."
Brenner said he liked the warm climate Nevada offered and the challenge of building a chocolate factory in the desert. The Ethel M factory, with its popular tour, is a departure for the Mars company.
"He's very proud of the quality and wanted to be able to show that off to the public," Brenner said. "I think he actually got a kick out of doing it and he's got marketing savvy, so he knew he had to play the Las Vegas game and make a tourist attraction out of the place. Besides, you can't learn any of the Mars secrets in the tour."
One of Mars' grandsons, Frank, worked at the Ethel M plant, she said. And the story about Forrest Mars living at the plant is no urban legend. He has a two-bedroom apartment above the factory.
Showing off to the public has never been a Mars strength. Brenner said the factory tour, the company's M&M's retail outlet on the Strip and other radical changes were brought about by a discovery in 1994 that market share was decreasing.
"They came to the realization that M&M's weren't going to be the candy of the next generation," Brenner said.
In addition to showcasing products in Las Vegas, the company tried animating the M&M's characters with claymation figures, putting Sweet Factories in FAO Schwarz stores (including the one in the Forum Shops at Caesars) and introducing a new color -- the blue M&M.
All the ideas have been successful and have jump-started the product back to life, Brenner said.
She added that the retail store experiment hasn't ended.
"We're likely to see something in Times Square and Beverley Hills, some of the other major retail locations," Brenner said. "No decisions have been made to add the concept, but the experiment isn't over."
Brenner's book paints a portrait of Mars as a paranoid tyrant given to tantrums his employees called "flares."
The Mars philosophy stresses quality, cleanliness and a disdain for status and bureaucracy. The book recounts how Mars frequently bought his candies off the shelf and, upon finding a flaw, would call a plant manager to have an entire lot removed from circulation. One manager interviewed by the author said he was called at 3 in the morning and was told to go to the plant to fix a problem. For fear of being fired, he did.
"Quality is a compulsion," the book says. "Perfection in tiny details like the M on an M&M or the squiggle on top of a chocolate bar is painstakingly pursued. Millions of M&M's are rejected for sale every day because their M's missed the mark or their shells didn't glow like headlights. A pinhole in a single Snickers is cause to destroy an entire production run."
Quality control even extends to the company's pet food division and the book describes how Kal Kan employees joined Mars in taste-testing sessions.
"If we don't taste it ourselves," an employee interviewed in the book says, "how do we know we're offering the best product we can?"
Brenner's book described the four-year process of getting information from Mars officials after the company slammed the door in the media's face for decades. She said a breakthrough occurred after Hershey took a market share edge away from Mars in 1988. She was assigned a story for the Washington Post's magazine and was persistent in requests for interviews.
When she was finally given a chance to meet brothers John and Forrest Mars Jr., the current leaders of the company, she gained access to the company's plants worldwide and went on a two-year quest to gather information.
Once her magazine article was published, the door was shut again -- the Mars brothers didn't like the way she presented intricate details of matters that had been behind closed doors for years.
The secrecy inside the Mars company seems to have filtered over to Hershey, which offers the media minimal access to executives and precious little information despite it being a publicly traded company. The reason: The company is trying to maintain its competitive edge and wants to shield information the way Mars does.
The book recounts the rivalry of the two candy companies, including incidents of corporate espionage. The incident that garnered the most publicity between the two companies was Steven Spielberg's decision to prominently feature Hershey's Reese's Pieces in his movie "E.T.: The Extraterrestrial."
Mars turned down Spielberg when he wanted to use M&M's in the film, in which a 9-year-old boy lures a frightened space alien out of a hiding place with a trail of candy. A Hershey executive signed on without seeing a picture of E.T. and when the first publicity photos arrived at corporate headquarters, company officials called E.T. ugly and thought they had made a mistake.
Hershey paid $1 million to use the E.T. likeness to advertise Reese's Pieces and company officials began seeing space aliens in their sleep.
But "E.T." turned out to be one of the biggest box office draws in history and the popularity of Reese's Pieces skyrocketed overnight.
"He's beautiful," one executive said of the popular title character.
Mars and his family then began kicking themselves for not taking the deal.
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