Remembering Canadian comedian , movie star and gentle heart John Candy

By Barbara Righton

        If there was ever any question about the loyalty of his friends and colleagues, it is answered in the first 20 seconds of A Tribute to John Candy (CBC Sunday). In that brief span, no less than Tom Hanks, Dan Aykroyd, Martin Short, Wayne Gretzky and Maureen O’Hara line up to sing the late comedic actor’s praises. O’Hara, who ended an 18-year retirement to play Candy’s mother in the acclaimed 1991 movie Only the Lonely, speaks for all of them when she explains, “ You couldn’t help but love John Candy.” Canadians who feel the same way will welcome the chance to see the big guy with the kind of face in action again.

        Originally conceived to mark the anniversary of his death ----March 4,1994 ---- A Tribute to John Candy contains none of the scandal that surrounded the demise of his onetime costar John Belushi. Aside from sharing a stint in Chicago’s Second City comedy troupe, and a weight problem, the two seemed to have nothing in common except tragically short lives. In fact, Second City president Andrew Alexander (the special’s executive producer, along with Candy’s widow Rose) promised more about Candy’s workaholic tendencies than he delivered.

        “ John always worked far too hard,” Alexander said in an interview last December. Still, he added, “There is no aura like the one surrounding Belushi after his death. There is no dirt.” Candy, according to everyone interviewed for the tribute, was a talented and sensitive man whose dramatic abilities were just beginning to grow. “Maureen O’Hara spoke of his acting skills in glowing terms,” Alexander said. “ She compared him to Charles Laughton.”

        That remark must have been left on the editing room floor. What survives is a general consensus that Candy had “presence,” as well as a fresh approach. It was his idea to throw the TV sets from the high rise during the opening credits of SCTV, we are told. Yosh and Stan Schmenge were his creations. And working with and eight year old Macaulay Culkin in Uncle Buck, says the film’s director, John Hughes, it was Candy who suggested a camera be mounted on his back so that the child star could be prompted between lines in a long interrogation scene. Smart and big-hearted.

        Tracing his early life in King City, just north of Toronto, the special’s narrator, Peter Gzowski, notes that Candy’s father died when he was only five. Others refer to his “tragic side” and his panic attacks.

        Film producer Dawn Steel allows as how Candy felt “ out of the core” of the Hollywood power elite even though he made numerous successful films including Splash (with Hanks) and Planes, Trains and Automobiles, costarring Steve Martin.

        If Candy did understand what it was like to be an outsider ---- and that is only an “if” ---- Jim Belushi recounts a telling story. On the set of Only the Lonely, the producers stuck O’Hara in a tiny trailer. When Candy complained on her behalf, he was told the budget was being spent on the picture, not on accommodations for old movie stars. Candy gave O’Hara his luxurious trailer and slept on a cot in cramped quarters for three days until the money men acquiesced.
       

        Like all great comedians, he understood the pain of humiliation: his own and others. Perhaps that’s why everybody loved John Candy.

(taken from Calgary Herald March 17, 1995 ed.)

P.S : Thanks, April

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