John Candy at 70: Remembering the ‘preposterously loveable’ star whose life was cut short

The star of Cool Runnings and Planes, Trains and Automobiles would have celebrated his 70th birthday a few weeks ago. Geoffrey Macnab explores what is behind his enduring popularity

John Candy in Planes, Trains and Automobiles (Rex Features)

It was the early 1990s. The two actors had just appeared in Oliver Stone’s JFK. They were on a private jet back to LA and were excitedly discussing their future plans. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to do some live Shakespeare together, they asked. The idea filled them with enthusiasm. Gary Oldman could play the tragic heroes like Macbeth while his travelling companion, John Candy, would be very well cast as Falstaff.  

This story appears in Nick de Semlyen’s book Wild and Crazy Guys, about Hollywood screen comedy of the Eighties and Nineties. The pair never did get to do their Shakespeare season. Oldman is back in awards contention this year for his performance as the hard-drinking Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman J Mankiewicz in David Fincher’s Mank, but his friend Candy has now been dead for more than 25 years. The larger-than-life Canadian star had a massive heart attack in the spring of 1994 when he was only 43 years old. A few weeks ago, 31 October would have marked his 70th birthday.

Like countless other comedians and clowns, Candy had a hankering to be taken seriously. He used to keep notes of the directors he hoped to work with, Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola prominent among them. Instead, he was the fat guy in a lot of very silly movies, the comic actor relying, as de Semlyen put it, on his “man-child charm and butterball physique”.  

Audiences were given very few chances to see Candy as anything other than a loveable buffoon. That is why it is so intriguing to see him opposite Kevin Costner’s earnest New Orleans district attorney, Jim Garrison, in a conspiracy thriller such as Stone’s JFK. Candy plays the garrulous southern lawyer Dean Andrews, who knows more than he is letting on about President Kennedy’s assassination.  

Candy’s lawyer is a charming but very shifty character, extravagantly dressed, always wearing sunglasses, and with a sheen of sweat on his skin. The bonhomie gives way to menace when Garrison threatens to charge him with perjury.  

It’s not a major role but Candy gives the kind of performance that reminds you of Charles Laughton, an equally large actor and one who could switch from comedy to pathos in a moment. He could also become very intimidating when a role demanded it.  

Could Candy have played the martinet Captain Bligh or the misshapen, misunderstood Quasimodo as well as Laughton once did? On the admittedly slender evidence of JFK, the likely answer is yes. The Canadian was far more than simply a cuddly everyman. He had an edge. “There is no question that he could have had a significant dramatic career. He could have gone on and done bigger and bigger parts,” Oliver Stone said after working with him.  

De Semlyen describes Candy being barracked outside a Chicago nightclub. For once, the famously good-natured actor lost his temper. He grabbed the heckler and lifted him up by the neck, pinning him against a wall. Onlookers weren’t just startled by his aggression but by his strength. “It was literally like a cartoon with the guy’s feet dangling above the pavement.  

Candy is always remembered in the US at this time of year as families celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas. Many make an annual ritual of watching him and Steve Martin in John Hughes’ Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) as the travellers trying to get home in time for the holidays. Candy plays shower curtain ring salesman Del Griffith. As they journey across the country, advertising exec Neal Page (Martin) simply can’t get away from him.  

The film plays up class divisions. At first, the affluent family man Page can’t hide his disdain for everything about Del’s character: the trashy books he reads, the junk food he eats, his obesity, his prattling conversation and the smell of his feet. (Del takes great pleasure in removing his socks and shoes when the two men are sitting next to each other on the plane.)

Del is one of Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables”. If the movie was remade today, he would probably have Vote for Trump badges pinned all over his lapels. He is funny, creepy, pathetic and very likeable. The brilliance of Candy’s performance, arguably the finest of his career, lies in the way he combines all these traits at the same time. Even when he is grinning and behaving with manic cheeriness, we’re always aware of his vulnerability. When he tells Martin “you’re not a very tolerant person” after being harangued by him, the expression on his face is like that of an abandoned puppy.  

Martin has some very cruel lines. “Didn’t you notice on the plane, when you started talking, eventually I started reading the vomit bag?” he taunts the crestfallen Candy. “You’re not even amusing accidentally.” Candy, though, completely undermines him by taking the insults. “You want to hurt me. Go ahead. I’m an easy target.”  

Planes, Trains and Automobiles is billed as a comedy but it has a dark and emotional undertow. It’s impossible to watch the film without feeling pity and mounting affection for the lonely salesman.  

Audiences felt similar sentiments when watching Candy in Uncle Buck as the slovenly, gambling, hard-drinking but conscientious and kind-hearted character looking after his brother’s obstreperous kids, or in Cool Runnings as Irv Blitzer, coach of the Jamaican bobsleigh team. No one could match him when it came to playing doughty underdogs.  

Unfortunately, not all of Candy’s other films had the same emotional depth. As an actor, he was a victim of his own amiability. People liked him and wanted to be around him. He was invariably cast as the avuncular everyman. Whenever you saw him on screen, he had a big smile on his face that barely faltered, even when he was being abused. One cod psychological explanation he offered for his behaviour on screen and off was that his father had died when he was still a young boy. “I was probably taking on a father role unconsciously,” he said of his tendency to always take charge of events.  

Candy was a throwback, as close as 1980s Hollywood came to the great comedy stars of the silent and early talkie period. For obvious reasons, he was compared to Fatty Arbuckle and Oliver Hardy. He was good at slapstick and never minded being the butt of the joke.  

One obituarist described Candy as “a versatile and energetic actor whose figure trapped him in comic roles”. But that doesn’t ring true. Candy was indeed very fat but he used his body in an ingenious fashion. Whether encroaching on Steve Martin’s personal space in Planes, Trains and Automobiles or playing a succession of bumbling nincompoops, he always stood out against the crowd because he was bigger and louder than anyone else. His size gave him presence. Contemporaries talk in awe about his professionalism, his ability to improvise and his energy on set.

In a career that lasted only 20 years, the Canadian racked up well over 40 movie credits, and that doesn’t include the TV roles. He wasn’t always discriminating. Alongside the films still savoured today are a fair number of duds. His comic persona also meant he was often underestimated.  

“The depth of John Candy’s talent did surprise me. He was one of my all-time favourite leading men,” the legendary Hollywood star Maureen O’Hara said after playing Candy’s fiery mother in Christopher Columbus’ Only the Lonely (1991). Co-star Ally Sheedy was equally effusive. “John has a way of making you feel like the most beautiful actress he’s ever worked with,” she commented. Candy especially liked the film because his size wasn’t foregrounded. He was playing a lovelorn Chicago cop in what was as close to a conventional rom-com as any film in which he starred.  

Candy’s career ended on a disheartening note. He was coming toward the end of shooting Wagons East! (1994), a slapdash western made in Mexico, when he had his fatal heart attack. The film was released a few months after his death and received atrocious reviews. He was playing yet another variation on his chump with a heart of gold, this time one in a cowboy outfit.  

The Canadian was among the most popular and highly-paid comedy stars of his era, “a mountainous lollipop of a man, and preposterously loveable” as critic Pauline Kael described him. A quarter of a century after his death, many of his films remain in circulation. A good John Candy performance is regarded by fans as the perfect pick-up when they’re feeling depressed.  

Nick de Semlyen’s book describes an encounter Candy had early in his Hollywood career with Steven Spielberg. He charmed Spielberg by telling him how much he admired his “movie about the fish” and the director reacted by casting him in 1941 (1979). This, though, was one of Spielberg’s least successful films, Candy’s role was inconsequential, and nothing meaningful came from their brief collaboration.  

Either because he was too busy making comedies or directors refused to take a chance on him in serious roles, Candy seldom strayed too far from type. Films such as Stripes, Splash, Uncle Buck, Cool Runnings and Planes, Trains and Automobiles constitute an impressive legacy in their own right. Nonetheless, the nagging feeling remains that, had he lived longer, he would have broadened his range and tackled far more challenging work. The role in JFK hinted at what he might have been able to achieve. The pity is we never did get to see his Falstaff.