'Hershey' movie set transforms Fayette County mansion into company founder's residence
Samuel Long / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Linden Hall, an early 20th century mansion located in the heart of a nearly 800-acre estate in Dawson, was bustling with the Hollywood cast and crew of the biopic “Hershey” earlier this week.
Situated among rolling hills in Fayette County, the stately structure is serving as the residence of the couple at the center of the film: Milton Hershey and his wife, Catherine. On Monday, actors Finn Wittrock, in the role of company founder Milton, and Alexandra Daddario, as Catherine, filmed the same scene over and over on the back porch of the mansion with director Mark Waters. Inside, the film’s producers hunkered down in a back room, typing away on their laptops and talking on their phones.
Among them was producer Mark Tilghman, co-founder of Dandelion Media, who noted that “Hershey” is one of the biggest projects the company has taken on.
“This needed to be this big because of the story itself,” he said. “You can’t do justice to this story without doing it to scale.”
The biopic is filming throughout Western Pennsylvania, including in Hershey as well as Butler County’s Harmony, Westmoreland’s Ligonier and Smithfield, also in Fayette. The cast and crew filmed at the Linden Hall estate June 9 and 10.
In the main parlor, two rows of director chairs, each outfitted with headphones, faced a screen showing the frames cameras were capturing outside. The house’s dining room was fully set and ready for the next shoot on the production’s calendar.
Trucks lined the road leading to the mansion while tents covered the lawn, protecting everything from camera equipment to cables. An expansive refreshments booth featured hot dogs, sodas and, most notably, a “Kissing Booth” of Hershey products stacked into a tower.
Suzanne Jones, a vice president with The Hershey Company, said that while she’s been on sets for commercials and television before, she’s never experienced life on a set made to support the scale of a feature film production.
“It’s an education, the amount of talent that is required at every aspect of the film,” she said.
All of the Hershey entities, including The Hershey Co., have partnered to make sure Milton Hershey’s story is told accurately, Jones said. Historians and archivists at The Hershey Foundation and the Milton Hershey School have dedicated “hours and hours” of their time to reading the film’s scripts and providing revisions.
For historical accuracy, these revisions can be incredibly specific, said Laura Schmidt, director of communications for the Milton Hershey School. The production keeps historians on set for the crew to consult when necessary.
“In a scene, one of the characters was using a clipboard,” Schmidt said. “And one of the archivists and historians, they Googled ‘when were clipboards created’ and they discovered that this scene was actually taking place two years before clipboards were actually established. So, they removed the clipboard from the scene.”
The Milton Hershey School, founded by the Hersheys in 1909 to provide housing and education to orphaned boys, enrolls qualifying students across Pennsylvania to live on its campus and receive an all-expenses-paid education.
Six students from the school interested in filmmaking had the opportunity for a behind-the-scenes look at the “Hershey” set, sound stage and production office in Pittsburgh on May 27 — providing them with what Schmidt called invaluable perspective into the movie industry.
She believes that kind of opportunity falls in line with the school’s mission and the values the Hershey family embodied — values that she hopes will resonate with the movie’s audience. “Hershey” is slated to be released in 2026.
“This movie truly puts the spotlight on Mr. and Mrs. Hershey’s legacy more than anything else, because I think a lot of people don’t know about the fact that he was just a different kind of businessman,” Schmidt said.
Dandelion Media co-founder Sharon Paul, who wrote the “Hershey” screenplay, said she was compelled by the overarching theme of love in the chocolatier’s narrative.
“I loved the story of Catherine Hershey, and I loved the dynamic between them and this idea that love conquers all,” said Paul, who is also a producer on the film. “They face all kinds of trials and setbacks and tragedy and they just keep doubling down with this ferocious optimism.”
Through the scriptwriting process, Paul also found a particular resonance with Catherine Hershey determination and character.
“She was determined to not be bound by society’s rules and restrictions, but she wasn’t harsh with it. She was really joyful and really kind and really generous,” Paul said. “I found that all to be very aspirational, but also something that I already held as an ideal. So I loved writing her and bringing her to life.”
Paul said she wants those values to remind the “Hershey” audience about “the best of what it means to be a human being.”
“You can dream big, you can work hard, you can have the absolute stuffing kicked out of you by life and you can get up and still be generous and you can still be kind and you can leave a legacy that is transcendent,” she said.
For Jones, Hershey’s story shows the potential of the American dream, where business owners can share the spoils of their individual success with the people around them.
“It is a distinctly American story. It’s one of someone who started with humble beginnings, a fourth grade education and really just willed himself through so many trials and tribulations,” Jones said. “And he didn’t do it alone. He leaned on the support of his family and friends who came to him and helped him finally find success.”
One of Milton Hershey’s most well-known quotes — “business is a matter of human service, no more to it than that” — especially resonated with Paul as she worked on the script.
“If every American business person, or every global business person, adopted that then I think we’d have a very different world.”