Hollywood Bread Building

History

Eleanor Roth Hansberry

Hollywood Bread’s true origins remain debated and difficult to verify, largely because its founder, Eleanor Roth Hansberry, understood the power of advertising and how to craft her own story. Born in Canton, Ohio, on March 5, 1906, to Leopold Maximillian Roth and Frances Marie Oberle, Eleanor spent her youth in Gary, Indiana, before her family settled in South Bend.

At 15, she married Notre Dame football player James “Jimmy” McQuern. Three years later, they divorced, and Eleanor moved to Chicago with their daughter, Mary Jane. There, she married stockbroker James Harry Hansberry, but his alcoholism led to a divorce after just two years.

Returning to South Bend, Eleanor married self-proclaimed “advertising genius” William Donald Dunkle, with whom she had another daughter, Gaye. Their marriage was rocky; Dunkle frequently turned off their apartment’s lights and refused to pay the phone bills. Around this time, Eleanor struggled to lose weight. Weighing 145 pounds and unwilling to give up her daily morning toast, she began to wonder if anyone had ever created a non-fattening bread.

Establishment of Hollywood Bread

Driven by this idea, Eleanor divorced Dunkle and turned to Elam Health Foods, which had experimental ovens suitable for testing her recipe. Her formula featured eight vegetables—parsley, celery, carrots, cabbage, cauliflower, artichoke, lettuce, and pumpkin—plus a touch of seaweed that accounted for 5% of the loaf. The remainder consisted of flour, honey, skim milk, molasses, and malt, with no added sugar or shortening. The resulting bread offered good flavor with roughly 30% fewer calories than a standard loaf, and slicing it thinner reduced the calorie count per slice even further.

Now in her 30s, Eleanor reconnected with Harry Hansberry, and the couple remarried in 1944. Although Harry doubted the bread’s potential and refused to invest, he introduced Eleanor to Hobe Hipwell. Facing termination from his brokerage job, Hipwell invested $1,000 in cash for a 49% stake in her company.

With funding secured, Eleanor traveled to Hollywood, California, to sell franchises, and it was here, rather than Hollywood, Florida, that the bread earned its name. She secured permission from legendary stars like Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Crawford, Jane Russell, Judy Garland, Grace Kelly, and Joan Fontaine to feature their photos inside stars on the wrapper.

Selling franchises proved difficult at first, but Eleanor eventually convinced bakeries in California, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Indiana to bake Hollywood Bread. Her business model earned her one cent per loaf, with an additional three cents directed toward promotion and advertising. Despite earning a meager $25 a week during these lean early days, she persisted, and by the 1970s, her company was valued at over $12 million.

Growth, Controversy, and Expansion

In 1963, the Federal Trade Commission ordered the company to cease its deceptive weight-loss advertising. The FTC revealed that Hollywood Bread was not inherently lower in calories than other brands; rather, the lower calorie count per slice was simply due to thinner slicing.

Despite forced changes to its marketing, the company’s momentum barely slowed. A 1969 nationwide syndicated profile on Eleanor featured her story alongside the recipe’s ingredients. Around that same time, she relocated the business to her favorite vacation spot: Hollywood, Florida. She constructed the Hollywood Bread Building in 1969 to serve as the new corporate headquarters.

Expanding her local presence, Eleanor opened the Hollywood House of Beauty, bringing in top stylists and skin specialists, and managed several other ventures, including Hollywood Diet Cola, the Hopkins-Patwell advertising agency, and Elam Health Foods, where her signature bread had first been developed.

Life at the Peak of Success

Eleanor made her home at 900 South Northlake Drive, a spacious waterfront mansion overlooking North Lake with views of Hollywood Beach. Known for hosting lavish parties, her neighbors included Bert Parks, actor and longtime host of the Miss America telecast, who was a regular guest.

In 1963, tragedy struck when four masked men broke into her home. They tied Eleanor up with drapery cords and scarves, cut the phone lines, and fled with ten fur pieces and a $12,000 diamond ring. After freeing herself, Eleanor ran to the home of her neighbor, Thomas Wohl, owner and president of Home Federal Savings and Loan Association (who later purchased the Kenilworth Lodge in Sebring), who called the police.

In addition to her mansion, Eleanor owned a series of yachts sequentially named Miss Hollywood, Miss Hollywood II, and Miss Hollywood III, each presumably larger than the last.

Decline of Hollywood Bread

Eleanor died on January 24, 1978, and her waterfront mansion was later demolished to make way for the home that stands there today. Following her death, Hollywood Bread struggled as sales steadily declined, a downturn driven by an inability to diversify its product line and changes to the original formula that had defined the brand. The last celebrity endorsement came from Ed McMahon in the early 1980s, and by the 1990s, both the company and its trademark were virtually defunct. Its headquarters continued to be used as general office space until the late 1990s.

Vacant for many years, the Hollywood Bread Building became a frequent shelter for unhoused residents. In 2014, a fire broke out on the top floor, causing minimal damage to the rest of the structure. Violence struck two years later in 2016 when an unhoused man attacked two other residents inside the building with a 2×4.

Demolition

Redevelopment efforts faced repeated setbacks. An initial proposal to convert the site into a multi-use property, featuring apartments, retail, offices, and nearly 1,000 parking spaces, never got off the ground. In 2013, MG3 Developer Group purchased the property out of foreclosure. Five years later in 2018, MG3 announced plans to proceed with a modified version of the previous design, dropping the office space in favor of a 433-unit luxury apartment complex. Demolition scheduled for early 2020 was delayed, likely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In June 2021, MG3 sold the property to Fort Lauderdale-based BTI Partners, who initiated demolition on August 13, 2021. BTI Partners made plans to replace the structure with a new apartment building featuring 362 market-rate units and 16,000 square feet of retail space. The iconic Hollywood Bread Building sign, originally crafted by William Gilio Rio, was planned to be preserved and incorporated into the new development, but as of 2026, the sign is nowhere to be found.

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