John Candy's time at the top didn't last all that long - he unexpectedly died in 1994.
His surprisingly early death was one final tragedy in a life often overshadowed with struggle
and sadness. Here's a look at the sometimes difficult and challenging life of John Candy.
Tragedy struck John Candy at an early age,
upending his young life and leaving behind a specter of sadness and loss.
Candy was born in 1950 to middle-class parents Evangeline and Sidney Candy, Sidney earning a
living as a car salesman in Toronto. When John Candy was just 5 years old and his brother, Jim,
was 6, Sidney Candy unexpectedly died from complications of heart disease at only 35.
According to Laughing on the Outside: The Life of John Candy,
Evangeline Candy had little choice but to make the economical decision to move her family away.
She took her two young kids to a very small bungalow in the working-class Toronto borough
of East York, which they shared with John Candy's grandparents and aunt. The knowledge that his
father died from a delicate heart stuck with Candy for his entire life. According to family members,
it was always in the back of his mind, and he ultimately couldn't escape it.
Although he fully embraced comedy and acting, and he certainly gave it his all,
going into the entertainment industry wasn't John Candy's first plan. He was initially an athlete,
playing offensive tackle on his high school football team in the Toronto area,
and according to The Hollywood Reporter, he harbored dreams of going pro some day.
Any hopes of playing in the Canadian Football League, such as for the local Toronto Argonauts,
dissipated when a severe knee injury permanently ended his playing days.
Candy turned his attention to performing instead, and soon after as a young adult,
he thrived in Canada's burgeoning comedy scene.
But he never entirely put football aside. Being a movie star afforded Candy the opportunity to
become a part owner of a CFL team - and his favorite one at that, the Toronto Argonauts.
In 1991, alongside fellow internationally-known Canadian celebrity Wayne Gretzky, Candy put up
the money to purchase a 10% stake in the Argos. Later that year, the newly
invigorated squad won the CFL's championship, the Grey Cup. Unfortunately, the Argonauts'
other owners decided to sell the team in 1994, ending Candy's brief tenure as a CFL big shot.
The Second City comedy troupe, with branches in Chicago and Toronto, proved so successful
and popular that, in 1976, the Canadian wing took its act to Ontario's Global Television
Network. The theatrical cast that came along for SCTV is legendary, and it included Harold Ramis,
Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Dave Thomas, and John Candy. It aired
irregularly and primarily in Canada until 1980, at which point Candy left,
only to return after the show was picked up in 1981 by U.S.-based NBC to air after Saturday
Night Live. The exposure made stars out of most of SCTV's players, particularly John Candy.
Portraying broad and memorable characters in films seemed like a foregone conclusion for the star,
who created so many for SCTV's various iterations.
Among his most beloved characters were TV personality Johnny La Rue,
a dark version of Beaver Cleaver from Leave it to Beaver, Julia Child, Japanese movie
monster Grogan, and the self-explanatory Harry, the Guy With a Snake on His Face.
Like the "Brat Pack" of teen actors who frequently worked together in '80s teen movies,
funny films of the 1980s were dominated by a loose, unnamed, but obviously connected handful
of actors. Almost all of them had honed their skills and found fame via Saturday Night Live
and the various SCTV series - they all worked together on TV, and they continued to work
together out of comfort and a shared comedic language when they moved on to big-budget films.
John Candy was an important member of this club, and he stayed loyal to his comedy pals throughout
his career. For example, all of his screen time as a traveling polka musician in Home Alone
is spent alongside SCTV co-star Catherine O'Hara, and he has a small role in Little Shop of Horrors,
which featured SCTV's Rick Moranis, Stripes' Bill Murray,
and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles' Steve Martin.
Candy also enjoyed a particularly special and fruitful relationship with filmmaker John Hughes.
"Happy Birthday! Woo!"
He starred in a number of projects that Hughes wrote or directed,
including Uncle Buck, Home Alone, Career Opportunities,
The Great Outdoors, National Lampoon's Vacation, and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.
Even though he found major success in the large, lucrative world of Hollywood filmmaking,
John Candy never abandoned the much smaller and more modestly budgeted
Canadian entertainment industry that had given him his big breaks.
In the '80s and '90s, the A-list movie star concurrently dabbled in movies and TV shows
with predominantly Canadian casts, or which were not widely seen outside Canada. In 1981,
Candy co-starred in Stripes, but also appeared in an episode of the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation's Tales of the Klondike. Two years later, he cameoed as a cheery security guard in
Vacation, but had a bigger role in Going Berserk, alongside SCTV pals Joe Flaherty and Eugene Levy.
Candy had a big 1985, with roles in Summer Rental, Brewster's Millions, and the CBC mockumentary The
Canadian Conspiracy. One of Candy's final films was the Canadian TV movie Hostage for a Day, which
he also directed as it filmed in various locations across his beloved home country of Canada.
Candy also sent up his own pro-Canada sentiments.
One of John Candy's last completed movies was the satirical comedy Canadian Bacon, in which
he was cleverly cast as a patriotic American sheriff who tries to lead an invasion of Canada.
While he did appear in some of the most important and enduring comedies
of the 1980s - National Lampoon's Vacation, Stripes, The Blues Brothers,
and more - John Candy didn't make it into Ghostbusters,
the highest-grossing comedy of the entire decade. It even starred a number of Candy collaborators,
including Stripes star Bill Murray, his friend Dan Aykroyd, and SCTV colleague Harold Ramis.
John Candy was actually supposed to be in the movie from the start, offered the role of
lovelorn nerd-turned-unwitting Keymaster vehicle Louis Tully. Director Ivan Reitman reached out
to Candy with a treatment outlining the story, but the actor wasn't impressed. Reitman later
recalled that the comedy legend "didn't get" Ghostbusters, and in response tried to pitch a
version of the character who would speak with a German accent. Reitman politely turned down
Candy's suggestions, deeming the additions over the top and unnecessary, and so Candy bowed out
of consideration. His SCTV castmate Rick Moranis got the role instead, although Candy did make
a cameo in the star-studded music video for Ray Parker Jr.'s "Ghostbusters" theme song.
John Candy's development as an actor in the 1970s, and his rise to stardom in the 1980s,
ran concurrent with a growing problem with addictions. In 1971, at the
suggestion of comedian friend Dan Aykroyd, Candy auditioned for the Second City comedy company.
He made it into the troupe, joining the likes of John Belushi, Gilda Radner, and Bill Murray.
That's when the trouble started, as Candy moved to Chicago and took up
the comedy life of staying up late, drinking, and getting heavily into drugs. Unfortunately,
these habits built on some other longstanding tendencies. Candy had begun smoking as a teenager,
and by the time he reached adulthood he was going through a pack a day.
The legendary actor would continue smoking for the rest of his life,
and that habit, combined with his drug use, would prove to be a harmful cocktail of substances.
One of John Candy's closest friends and comedy idols early in his career was John Belushi.
Like Candy, Belushi worked out his chops at Second City, and collaborated with Dan Aykroyd,
and all three starred together in The Blues Brothers and the war comedy 1941. Tragically,
the hard-living John Belushi died of a drug overdose in March 1982,
at the age of just 33. Candy, who like Belushi was both heavyset
and engaged in some unhealthy habits of his own, took the death extremely hard.
According to the book Laughing on the Outside: The Life of John Candy,
John Belushi's death was literally sobering. Actor Dan Hennessey later said that Candy saw
the death of his friend and hero as "a message" to get his own life in order.
Candy quit cocaine at that point, but the untimely demise of his friend also sent the actor into a
deep funk. Friend John Stocker reported that Candy was so upset in the immediate wake
that he fell into a depressive state so bad that he wouldn't leave his home or answer his phone.
Health was a consistent worry to John Candy, and to those who loved the actor. His father
had died from heart problems at the exceedingly young age of 35, leaving behind the possibility
that Candy could die from a similar condition, and too soon at that. The actor struggled with
his weight throughout his adult life. His weight reportedly usually hovered around 275 pounds,
although he made great efforts to lose weight throughout his life
via diets, exercise, and trainers, all of which he had a hard time sticking with.
After he turned 40, he self-medicated a sudden onset of panic attacks with overeating. His weight
increased, particularly after he pulled out of hosting the 1992 Canadian Genie Awards because it
promoted Candy's presence with the crude tag line, quote, "We got the biggest star we could find."
Before long, Candy's scale number was reportedly around 330 pounds. In addition to his tendency to
overeat, Candy was also a regular smoker, which may have helped contribute to his
declining health. Whether it was genetics, habits, or a combination of the two,
Candy would ultimately go the way his father did and die of a fatal heart attack.
In 1994, Candy reported to the set of his new film
Wagons East. The film was a Western comedy in which he starred as James Harlow,
a cowboy and wagon master hired to take a group of unhappy settlers away from the brutal frontier
and back to their homes on the East Coast. A box office bomb and critical failure, Wagons East was
an ignominious bomb in the stellar career of John Candy, and the last movie he'd ever make.
On March 4, 1994, Candy shot his final day of scenes for Wagons East and celebrated by cooking
up a late-night dinner for his assistants. That night he also called costars Richard Lewis and
Robert Picardo just to chat, and also phoned his young children at home back in Los Angeles
to say goodnight. Then the actor headed to bed, but he never woke up. While he slept,
he suffered a heart attack. John Candy was just 43, and his death rocked the entertainment world.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, John Candy met the woman who would become his wife, Rosemary,
in the late 1970s. They were set up on a blind date and hit it off,
then started to spend more time together when Candy asked her to help him type a script.
She went on to become an abstract painter and ceramics artist, and started a family with the
comedian. After marrying in 1979, the couple had two children, daughter Jennifer and son Chris.
When their father died in 1994, Jennifer was 14 and her brother was 9.
Both Candy kids kept up their father's legacy in entertainment and went into television and
film. Jennifer Candy appeared on episodes of Liv and Maddie and Sydney to the Max, and produced
the TV shows Prom Queen and Cockpit. Chris Candy has popped up on shows like Murder in the First
and in a sketch on The Late Late Show with James Corden. Fittingly, both Candy kids got their start
on a project of their father's, voicing characters on the Saturday morning cartoon Camp Candy.
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Grunge videos about your favorite celebrities are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.