Behind-The-Scenes Facts About John Candy Movies That Made Us Miss Him
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When it comes to stories about John Candy, it seems like everyone has something nice to say. To co-stars, crew members, and ordinary fans alike, the comedian was a sweet, fun-loving guy who enjoyed making people laugh. He passed too soon, at just 43 years old, and yet the films he left behind continue to delight audiences decades later.
The following John Candy facts have been shared by the people who knew him best, co-workers and family members who have become the keepers of his legacy. Vote up the behind-the-scenes stories that make you miss him.
- Photo: Uncle Buck / Universal Pictures1901 VOTES
He Invited The Cast Of 'Planes, Trains And Automobiles' To Watch The Oscars In His Hotel Room - And Paid For Room Service
Troy Evans was just starting out in Hollywood when he was hired to play the role of "antisocial truck driver" in Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Though only cast to speak a single line, the madcap shooting schedule meant he stayed with the production for more than 50 days.
One night, during production, Evans got a call from John Candy. As he explained to Vanity Fair,
It was the night of the Oscars. And the phone rings, I’m sitting in my underwear in my room, eating room service and watching the TV. And the phone rings. “Is this Troy?” I said, “Yeah.” “Troy, this is John Candy. I’m having a few folks up to watch the Oscars, and wondered if you’d like to join us.”
Evans was excited, partly because he assumed director John Hughes would also be attending Candy's impromptu party, as well as the film's producers and possibly Steve Martin. However, when he went upstairs to Candy's hotel room, he discovered none of those people were there. Instead, Candy had invited the cast - the whole cast, meaning everyone who was acting in the movie, even if they had single lines like Evans:
...John Hughes wasn’t there. The producers weren’t there. And Steve Martin wasn’t there. Who was there was everybody who was like me on the movie. He went through all the down-the-ladder actors and invited them all up to his suite. Isn’t that wonderful? And then he got like, a thousand dollars’ worth of room service. He got like 20 pizzas, and just the food just kept coming all evening. And so as I was leaving, I tried to slip him $200 to help with the food. And I’ll remember this on my deathbed. John Candy said, “Troy, that’s been taken care of.”
- Photo: Paramount Pictures23,375 VOTES
In Wild and Crazy Guys, author Nick de Semlyen writes that Candy enjoyed making Steve Martin laugh on the set of Planes, Trains and Automobiles. De Semlyen also reveals one of Candy's most touching lines in the film was improvised:
Martin and Candy, clad in a topcoat and parka, respectively, were freezing their butts off. But they knew they were making gold. Between takes, Candy would crack up Martin by pretending to act out a cheesy gladiator movie, moving his lips in a way that made it sound like he was dubbed.
And Martin was particularly impressed by one bit of improv by his co-star: During the scene where Del reveals that his wife has died and explains that’s why he attaches himself to people, Candy added the line, “But this time I couldn’t let go.” Long after Candy’s death, Martin would get a tear in his eye remembering it.
- Photo: Warner Bros.32,895 VOTES
To portray New Orleans lawyer Dean Andrews Jr. in JFK, Candy worked with a dialect coach and focused intensely on getting the character right. According to Candy's daughter, Jen, he worked harder on that role than any other in his filmography, and the effort caused the usually laid-back actor no small amount of stress. Jen told The Hollywood Reporter:
We were having water fights with our cousin while Dad was trying to learn lines, and we did get yelled at because we were being too loud. It was a "dad" yell. He never yelled.
Yet despite his hard work, Candy was nearly cut out of the film. Biographer Martin Knelman writes that star Kevin Costner made sure that didn't happen:
A trailer with Candy in it had already been released when [director] Oliver Stone decided to edit Candy out. Candy was devastated when he heard about this. Stone's decision also upset Costner, who argued vehemently with Stone and persuaded him to put the scene with Candy back in. In the end, Candy received a handwritten letter of apology from Stone.
- Photo: Universal Pictures
In a 2016 interview with the cast of Uncle Buck, actors Amy Madigan and Jean Louisa Kelly say working with Candy was a real joy. Kelly says Candy was "a very warm person," and Madigan praises his generosity as an actor:
He was really just an incredibly generous person. A real family guy. He treated everybody so equitably and was just such a cool person. He was just that guy that you wanted him to be. He would really work with you to figure out what you needed and wanted as an actor - which is what you hope that actors do, but oftentimes they don’t.
Madigan adds that Candy would invite his fellow actors to dinner or ask if they needed a ride anywhere: "He was very inclusive in that type of thing, which was really nice."
When it came to jokes, Madigan says Candy "was the king of ad libs." Kelly adds that Candy improvised on set "quite a bit," which writer/director John Hughes encouraged. "Hughes really just let John Candy take the ball and go with it through a lot of the movie," she says.
- Photo: Paramount Pictures
1985's Summer Rental originally featured a subplot in which Candy's wife (Karen Austin) befriends a single father played by John Larroquette. He's the kind stranger who pays for the family's tickets when Austin realizes she's forgotten her wallet.
Larroquette was meant to be a romantic foil to the stressed and sunburned Candy, and originally appeared in several more scenes. In the final cut, he's almost completely absent from the movie. According to Austin, this is because audiences didn't want anyone to break up Candy's marriage. She told the St. Pete Catalyst:
[Larroquette's character] and I were getting closer, and at one point I said to him "I really love my husband," or "I’m not available." We had a montage of things with him, and the kids, where we did more touristy things. I think we went to Busch Gardens and shot with parrots. And then, more scenes of me coming home and John [Candy] being sad.
So that was sort of a B plotline. But when they showed it to audiences, audiences hated it. Because they didn’t want anything to threaten John Candy. They didn’t even want the hint that he might be hurt by his wife.
- Photo: Warner Bros.61,403 VOTES
1991's Nothing but Trouble was the first film to be both written and directed by Dan Aykroyd - and it was a critical and financial failure. Candy played the twin sibling roles of Dennis Valkenheiser and his sister, Eldona, but twice the Candy did not equal twice the fun.
However, Aykroyd was gracious enough to accept full blame for the film's shortcomings. In Rena Fruchter's 2007 biography of Chevy Chase, she writes:
Even Dan Aykroyd, who had put a great deal of work into the production, had to admit it was a flop. In a letter to the other cast members, Dan graciously took full responsibility for the film's failure at the box office and with critics, and he didn't want anyone else to feel their work hadn't been sufficient.
- Photo: TriStar Pictures72,063 VOTES
Making Wagons East! was not a pleasant experience for Candy.
Robert Crane served as Candy's assistant during this time, and in his memoir, he writes Candy knew the film's prospects were bad - the script was uninspiring, and not only had the actor not worked with the director before, he also didn't particularly want to be in a Western - but he was obligated to make it. He was under contract to do one more film for Carolco Pictures, and his part ownership of the Toronto Argonauts had cost him $1 million.
Later, Candy's mood would darken significantly when the Argonauts were sold without his knowledge. The actor was only a minority owner, so his say-so wasn't necessary for the sale, but the emotional impact of it hit him hard. Crane writes:
His childhood team, his first sporting love, had been sold behind his back. It was crushing. I'd never seen John more depressed during the entire time I'd known him. He felt utterly betrayed. All the goodwill he had sold to the people of Toronto and across Canada during those three seasons now appeared like a complete shame. He was angry, disheartened, and embarrassed.
Candy was so upset he went on "a two-day tequila bender," Crane writes. The actor's health was already poor at the time, and this only exacerbated the issue. He would pass during production, on March 4, 1994.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter years later, Candy's son, Chris, said:
I don’t know if he was excited to work on [Wagons East!] or wasn’t... Richard Lewis, who worked with him on that movie, told me he was so much fun and so funny, but when he looked at my dad, he looked so tired.
Candy was "miserable" during production, Crane writes, but that didn't stop him from being a nice guy. On Ash Wednesday (less than a month before he passed), Candy hired a priest to come to the set to perform rites for Catholic crew members.
- Photo: Buena Vista Pictures
The sequel to 1977's The Rescuers, The Rescuers Down Under features Candy as the voice of Wilbur the albatross.
Collider writes that Candy's friendship with screenwriter and storyboard artist Joe Ranft led to him improvising many of his lines in the recording studio:
Much of Candy’s dialogue was improvised in the recording session, thanks largely to the chemistry between Candy and Joe Ranft. “They’d always be riffing back and forth getting each other to laugh,” [director Mike] Gabriel said, including the sequence where Wilbur is asking, “Can I get you anything to drink?” to the utter befuddlement of the two mice. “We put it in the movie because that’s just how he was. He adored Joe Ranft,” Gabriel said.
- Photo: MGM
To become his half-man, half-dog character in Spaceballs, Candy spent about three hours each day in the makeup chair, and wore a 30-pound battery pack that powered his ears and tail. The ears were designed by special-effects artist Rick Lazzarini, who's worked on everything from Aliens to Hocus Pocus.
Candy operated his tail with a button hidden in his costume, while two technicians moved his ears via remote control.
- Photo: Terms of Endearment / Paramount Pictures103,359 VOTES
Most interviews with Candy's cast and crewmates contain nothing but glowing words for the former actor. To hear them tell it, he was almost always courteous, friendly, fun-loving, and above all, professional. Except that time he partied with Jack Nicholson.
In a 2020 retrospective for the movie Splash, director Ron Howard shared this intoxicating anecdote:
John, totally professional guy, but he’s late one day... And he finally pulls up and rolls out of the car and he says, "Ron, I’m so sorry."
I said, "It’s okay. You’re late, but we’ll get going."
He said, "No, no, no. Look, I’m drunk. Here’s what happened, I’m telling you the truth: I’m at the bar and Jack Nicholson is at the bar. Jack Nicholson knew my name, Ron! And he starts buying me drinks. I [Candy] said, 'But I’ve got to go shoot.' And he [Nicholson] said, 'You’re going to be all right, kid. Don’t worry about it.' And he kept buying me drinks. I never went to bed, Ron. I never went to bed."
- Photo: Buena Vista Pictures
A handful of animal sidekicks are in 1995's Pocahontas - Percy the pug, Meeko the raccoon, Flit the hummingbird - but none of them talk. Not in the final film, anyway.
When Disney was developing Pocahontas, it was intended for all of the animals to talk. That included a character that was removed before production: Redfeather the turkey. Played by Candy, Redfeather was meant to be Pocahontas's sidekick (an early pencil test, not featuring the voice of Candy, can be seen here).
As Vulture reports:
Before his death, John Candy had signed on to provide the voice for a turkey named Redfeather in this Disney animated film Pocahontas. Candy had even recorded a significant portion of his dialogue already. Redfeather was intended to be Pocahontas’s sidekick, but after Candy passed on, the character was cut from the film completely.
