The Full Biography
John Candy. Actor. The Toronto comic who made a large body into a kindness American pictures still use as weather, then died at forty-three on a Western set before the decade had finished hiring him.
This is his story.
The image most people still carry is Uncle Buck in a too-small bed, or a man in a shower curtain on a frozen highway, trying to keep Steve Martin from leaving him in the snow. The face might cry and joke in the same breath. What the still cannot show is John Franklin Candy of Newmarket and East York, a father who died on the boy’s fifth birthday, a Toronto shop called Second City, a sketch series Hollywood still under-files, and a heart that had already been warned when he went to Durango, Mexico, and did not come home.
He was born on October 31, 1950, in Newmarket, Ontario, the son of Sidney James Candy, a veteran of the Second World War, and Evangeline Valeria Aker. The family lived the working-class life of East York, in Toronto. On October 31, 1955 — the boy’s fifth birthday — Sidney died of complications of heart disease. He was thirty-five. That inheritance is not a metaphor in this file. It is a medical fact the son carried into every fitting room and every physical, and it is the quiet behind the generosity people remember as personality. Evangeline raised him. The first pressure was to be large enough to fill a missing man and gentle enough not to break the house that remained.
He went to Neil McNeil High School and then to Centennial College, where he studied journalism and wandered toward the stage. In 1972 he joined the Toronto company of The Second City. The room was not Hollywood. It was a Canadian shop that trained people to write on their feet: Catherine O’Hara, Eugene Levy, Rick Moranis, Andrea Martin, Dave Thomas, Joe Flaherty, and, in the same weather, Martin Short. Dan Aykroyd had come through the same door. In 1976 they put the shop on television as Second City Television — SCTV — first in Canada, then on NBC. Candy’s Johnny LaRue was a small-time star who wanted velvet and received linoleum. With Levy he played Yosh Shmenge of the Happy Wanderers, a polka man so sincere the joke became affection. The series won Primetime Emmy Awards for writing in 1981 and 1982. Candy’s name is on that work. American studios would hire the body. The writing is the correction.
Steven Spielberg put him in 1941 (1979). John Landis put him in The Blues Brothers (1980) as Burton Mercer, the parole officer who cannot quite quit the job of caring. Stripes (1981) made him a recruit people liked more than the plot. The Hollywood door that changed the pay scale was Splash (1984), Ron Howard’s mermaid comedy, in which Candy played Freddie Bauer, Tom Hanks’s brother — a loud man who is also a soft one. After that the town knew what to do with him. It put him in Summer Rental, Volunteers, Armed and Dangerous, Spaceballs. Some of those pictures are work. One of them is a monument.
John Hughes wrote Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) around two men who cannot get home for Thanksgiving. Steve Martin is Neal Page, tight, furious, correct. Candy is Del Griffith, a shower-ring salesman who talks too much and has nowhere to go. In a motel room they share a bed and a humiliation. In a car they share a fire. At the end the audience learns that Del’s wife is dead and that the talk has been a way of not going back to an empty house. Grief and a joke occupy the same coat. That is the picture. It is why the other comedies still work when they work, and why the ones that used only the size feel thin.
Uncle Buck (1989), also Hughes, made him a babysitter in a dirty overcoat who turns out to be the adult in the room. In Home Alone (1990) he appears for a day as Gus Polinski, Polka King of the Midwest — Hughes writing a cameo that is also a thank-you note to SCTV. Only the Lonely (1991), with Maureen O’Hara, asked him to play a Chicago cop who cannot leave his mother. Oliver Stone put him in JFK (1991) as Dean Andrews, a New Orleans lawyer, a short dramatic turn that surprised people who had filed him under slob. Cool Runnings (1993) made him Irv Blitzer, a disgraced bobsled coach who takes a Jamaican team to the Olympics. He was, for a stretch, the most complete large kindness American comedy had hired: a slob and a father in the same frame.
In 1991 he joined Bruce McNall and Wayne Gretzky as a co-owner of the Canadian Football League’s Toronto Argonauts. The club won the Grey Cup that year. The purchase was not a publicity stunt in his mind. It was a Toronto kid buying a piece of the city’s Saturday. Friends from SCTV describe a professional who arrived early, stayed late, and treated crew the way a man treats family when he remembers what a missing father costs. Interviewers asked about his weight. He sat through it. He worried about the heart. He went to work anyway.
The turn never arrived as a thin, serious decade in which the fat comic becomes a statesman. That is the fact, and it should be said without decoration. There is Toronto, a shop, a coat in the snow, a few great pictures, a warning, and forty-three. Other men got a second act of awards-season gravity. Candy got unfinished dailies.
The pictures around Hughes are the working catalog. Spielberg put him in 1941 (1979). Landis put him in The Blues Brothers (1980) as Burton Mercer. Stripes (1981) made him a recruit people liked more than the plot. Splash (1984) changed the pay scale. Brewster’s Millions (1985), Summer Rental (1985), Volunteers (1985), Armed and Dangerous (1986), and Little Shop of Horrors (1986), as Wink Wilkinson the radio man, are the years the town used the size. Spaceballs (1987) made him Barf, a Mog half-man half-dog in Mel Brooks’s Star Wars joke. The Great Outdoors (1988), again with Hughes’s weather, put him opposite Dan Aykroyd at a lake. Who’s Harry Crumb? (1989) is a detective picture that asked too little. Uncle Buck (1989) asked enough. Home Alone (1990) asked for a day and got Gus Polinski. The Rescuers Down Under (1990) hired the voice. Only the Lonely (1991), with Maureen O’Hara, asked him to play a Chicago cop who cannot leave his mother. Delirious (1991) and Nothing but Trouble (1991) are the ones the banquet speech skips. JFK (1991) is the one it should not.
SCTV remains the first shop. Johnny LaRue wanted velvet and received linoleum. Yosh Shmenge, with Eugene Levy, played polka as if sincerity were the joke and then as if the joke were affection. He did Mayor Tommy Shanks, and he did the sports announcer who could not stop. The series won writing Emmys in 1981 and 1982; his name is on that work. The Toronto company — O’Hara, Levy, Moranis, Andrea Martin, Dave Thomas, Joe Flaherty, Martin Short, and, through the same door, Dan Aykroyd — is a Canadian weather the American pictures sit on. Hollywood hired the body. The writing is the correction. Friends from those rooms describe a man who arrived early, stayed late, and treated crew the way a man treats family when he remembers what a missing father costs.
In 1991 he joined Bruce McNall and Wayne Gretzky as a co-owner of the Toronto Argonauts. The club won the Grey Cup that November at Winnipeg Stadium. The purchase was not a publicity stunt in his mind. It was a Toronto kid buying a piece of the city’s Saturday. Cool Runnings (1993) made him Irv Blitzer, a disgraced bobsled coach who takes a Jamaican team to the Olympics — a father in a dirty coat again, this time on ice. Rookie of the Year (1993) was a small baseball part. He worried about the heart. Interviewers asked about his weight. He sat through it. He went to work anyway. Rosemary Hobor, married in 1979, kept the house in Los Angeles while the pictures kept the calendar. Jennifer and Christopher were the children. The Candy on a Western set in Mexico was a man who had already been a climate and was now a hired neighbor on someone else’s picture.
Six things most people never knew
- His father died of heart disease on John’s fifth birthday. Sidney was thirty-five. The son’s own death, at forty-three, is not a coincidence the file can ignore.
- SCTV is the first shop, not a Hollywood invention. Two Emmys for writing, 1981 and 1982. O’Hara, Levy, Moranis, Martin, Thomas, Short. Canadian weather the American pictures sit on.
- Planes, Trains and Automobiles is the monument. 1987. Hughes. Martin. A dead wife in the last reel. The uncle pictures borrow that grief even when they do not name it.
- He co-owned the Toronto Argonauts. With McNall and Gretzky. Grey Cup, 1991. The hometown was not a press biography. It was a franchise.
- Gus Polinski was a day’s work and a full character. Hughes wrote the polka man for him. The cameo is SCTV walking through a blockbuster without asking permission.
- He knew the heart was a warning. Doctors and family history had already spoken. He went to Durango anyway. The file is a man who would not sit the job out.
He married Rosemary Hobor in 1979. They had two children, Jennifer and Christopher. Rosemary kept the house while the pictures kept the calendar. The children have had to share a father who is also a coat, a polka, and a highway in winter. Colleagues still talk about the first-in, last-out manners. The Candy on a Western set in Mexico was a man who had already been a climate and was now a hired neighbor on someone else’s picture. Both are the life.
The later years
There were almost none. That sentence is the honest one. In early 1994 he was in Durango, Mexico, shooting Wagons East!, a comedy Western for Peter Markle that would be released after his death and would not be worthy of the cost. He had already shot Michael Moore’s Canadian Bacon, a satire that would arrive in 1995 as a leftover. He had been told to lose weight, to rest, to treat the family history as a clock. Sidney had died at thirty-five of the same inheritance. Doctors and family had already spoken. He showed up in Durango anyway. On March 4, 1994, he died of a heart attack in his sleep at the hotel. He was forty-three. Rosemary and the children were the house in Los Angeles. The pictures had not finished hiring him.
The body was brought back. Dan Aykroyd eulogized him. The funeral rites ran through the Catholic life he had been raised in, St. Martin of Tours in Los Angeles among the rooms. He is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, among the industry that used him and, at its best, saw him. Wagons East! opened that August and was received as a film that should not have had to exist. Canadian Bacon opened the next year. Neither is the monument. The monument is still a shower-ring salesman in a shared bed, an uncle in a dirty overcoat, a polka king in a snowed-in airport, and a writing credit on a Canadian sketch show the American banquet under-files.
What those last months were is a man on a Western set who would not sit the job out. He had bought a football team. He had played a New Orleans lawyer for Oliver Stone. He had been the adult in Hughes’s rooms. He had been told the heart was a warning and had treated the warning as a thing you heard and then drove past. Forty-three is the file. Durango is the last address. East York is the first. The shop in Toronto did not close because one of its graduates had died. It simply had to go on without the largest kindness in the room. Other men got a second act of awards-season gravity. Candy got unfinished dailies and a coat the road pictures still steal.
After he was gone
Dan Aykroyd eulogized him. The funeral rites ran through the Catholic life he had been raised in. He is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California, among the industry that used him and, at its best, saw him. Jennifer and Christopher have grown up in public enough to be asked what the still cannot answer. Every large comic who wants to be loved, not only laughed at, still pays him a tax in kindness. Every road picture that wants a soul still steals the coat. Martin still arrives in the same sentence. The sentence is the right double bill.
He came out of Newmarket and East York, lost a father on a birthday, built a shop on SCTV, wore Hughes’s coat in the snow, played an uncle, bought a football team, ignored a warning, and died on a Western before the decade had finished hiring him. If you only remember Buck, you have the still. If you remember Sidney, the Emmys, Del Griffith, and forty-three, you have him.
Portrait: Mike F. Campbell · CC BY 2.5 · via Wikimedia Commons