1979 was a great year for John, he finally married his long term sweetheart Rose at St Basil’s church on 28th April. Tony Rosato, one of John’s friends and colleagues told me “One of my favourite memories about John was when he was getting married, his jacket was a little too wide so he had it pinned up a bit, so we were trying to pick up his suit and pick up flowers and so on, and it was such a special day for him he was so excited, so full of life and love, it was a special morning.” Sheldon Patinkin was also at the wedding, he had previously been living in the house that John and Rose were now frequenting, so Rose stopped on her way down the aisle to see if he had picked his post up. Rose was the most beautifully stunning bride. I can only imagine what a heartfelt event that was. John couldn’t have been prouder.
John also landed a small part in a film called Lost and Found, starring George Segal and Glenda Jackson, directed by Melvin Frank. Frank loved John’s face so much, but he wanted him to play a French car rental salesman in his 50’s! John tried to grow as much facial hair as he could at the time, the makeup and hair department decided they were going to give him a perm and dye his hair black, John went along with it as they told him it would wash out. It didn’t. The perm took a while to relax and the dye washed out in stages so at one point his hair was purple, then pink! The film was a flop, but John’s short scene is worth catching.
Despite his drunken nonchalance, John must have impressed Spielberg at that party, as shortly after they met he was actually cast as Private Foley in Spielberg’s first attempt at a comedy film, 1941. Co stars included Dan Aykroyd, Treat Williams, Nancy Allen, John Belushi (although they were never in any scenes together), Frank McRae, Mickey Rourke and Walter Olkewicz. The film depicts the panic in Los Angeles after the attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941. Since its release 1941 has gained a cult status, however at the time it was neither critically nor financially successful.
Walter Olkewicz played Hinshaw and originally was only meant to be working on the movie for one day. He was cast as a mechanic in a scene where he was working on the tank that the squad were going to drive away in. However he impressed Spielberg that much that he was kept on for the whole movie.
“The film was filmed as a covered set, which means they are filming outside but if it rains they have a place to go immediately inside to film”, explains Olkewicz, “so we were in the covered set and Spielberg said to us, ‘You just work something out, I want there to be a big fight going on’. I said ‘John you over here, Frank you over there’. Because I was a director of my own comedy group at that point, I was inspired by these people, but I was in no way intimidated by them, so I took over. Spielberg came back and of course I was a major part of this thing I had created. Spielberg said ‘well you are very good, do you have any plans for the next few weeks?’ the crew and cast applauded as they knew that I had just been upgraded from a day player to an integral part of the cast.”
So Olkewicz was part of the tank crew, alongside John, Rourke, McRae and Aykroyd. Olkewicz was literally with John every day for 28 weeks and they were in every scene together. They also spent a lot of time hanging out on set and getting to know each other. Olkewicz reminisces, “Working with him, we always had these little games that we played. We played baseball games with little pencils, we would make noise and wave our fingers like the crowd was cheering. We would sit around on set for four, five, six hours before you do an hour on camera. Spielberg, as wonderful as he was, and he was wonderful, would wait till the cloud formation was exactly right in the sky. So we would sometimes have to wait hours just to get a shot in.”
One of the initial traits that struck Olkewicz about John was that he was a man of great integrity. The set was full of beautiful women and lots of the cast were cheating on their wives and girlfriends because they could.
This was Olkewicz’s first feature film, “I was kind of in awe of it (the affairs) and I remember going to John and saying ‘Wow this is great!’ He said, ‘Ya know I got my girl at home and why would eat hamburger out when I have steak at home. I got my Rosie.’ I thought wow! Not only was he not tempted by it he couldn’t even see any logic to do anything like that, and I tell you some of the big people were having girls going in and out of their trailers. So it was not only tempting but also pretty easy to hide. So we talked about that a lot, what Rosie was like. ‘That’s my bride, she will always be my bride’ he would say.”
During their time on set John, Olkewicz and McRae discussed their weight as they were all big men and they decided that they all needed to lose weight. So they made a bet. John and Olkewicz both had to lose 50 pounds and McRae had to lose 100 because he was bigger and he couldn’t even weigh in on scales anymore. So whoever won the bet, the other two would have to buy the winner a US$500 suit. However a year later they all ran into each other “John had gained about 80 pounds, I had gained 50 pounds and Frank was off the scales.”
By 1980 John was starring in a couple of smaller films, a Canadian production called Double Negative and also a TV film, The Courage of Kavak the Wolf Dog. But things were about to get interesting when Aykroyd and Belushi had written and were making a movie of the Blues Brothers (a progression from their SNL characters). A star studded affair featuring; James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, John Lee Hooker along with other amazing blues musicians, Carrie Fisher as Elwood’s estranged ex-girlfriend and John Candy as the role of Burton Mercer - the parole officer trying to track the brothers down. Directed by John Landis the film was an amazing success and still holds up well today. Candy’s character had a small, but legendary part which he played beautifully. In fact you will find many people still quote his famous line when ordering drinks “Orange whip? Orange whip? Three Orange whips”. If you have ever wondered how to make an orange whip, just add vodka, rum and cream to orange juice, pour over ice and stir (I hope it tastes nicer than the recipe sounds!). I’m sure John used Orange Whip as it’s the last thing you order, and it’s much funnier than ordering three beers.
For John, his personal life was also going well, he and Rose were expecting their first born. John had it hand-written on his Blues Brothers contract that should Rose go into labour whilst they were filming that he could leave straight away to make sure he was by her side. On 3rd February 1980, the beautiful Jennifer Candy came into the world, John was beside himself and adored being a father. That year John also bought a country estate in Queensville, just outside of Newmarket and around 40 miles from Toronto. He told David Letterman in an interview, “I was sitting on the toilet one day, looking at the want ads. I wanted to get out of the house I was living in, and I saw this great country estate, ten acres, pond, barn. The price was right, I shouted ‘Rose, honey! I’ve got it’.” John went down there the same day, it was in the middle of a snowstorm and bought it, “No Real Estate agent, I didn’t notice the running water”.
When they moved in they realised there was water running right through the property, he had to pay to have a channel built around it to divert the water, then his grass went brown so he had to pay for an irrigation system. This makes me chuckle as it’s so John, he rushes in to live the dream and gets so caught up he doesn’t check out the practicalities. He spent the next three years making movies trying to pay for the place. Of course it all worked out and I believe the family still own that smallholding today. In fact John actually tried to turn it into a working farm. He bought a tractor and planted grass, as he told Letterman, “I actually bought a tractor this summer, an old 1947 Massey Harris, and er the lines aren’t exactly equal, it was my first time, I ploughed the field.” Letterman asks, “What will you plant?”, John replies, “Just grass. Just grass, I don’t want to push it, I don’t want to push it.”
In fact later on that smallholding the family would try and farm beef cattle, after the first few went to the slaughterhouse they didn’t eat meat for a while and the rest became pets. There is a story John tells, where the cows actually got out of their field and he had to round them up in his golf cart. That in itself mu
st have been comedy gold. There were also horses rescued, in John’s words 'saved from the glue factory', ducks that unfortunately the fox fancied, a few cats and a dog called Keema.
Aside from the initial (rather large) teething problems, that property actually sounds like heaven.
Big City Comedy
In 1980 at the end of SCTV Season 2, John, Catherine O’Hara and Harold Ramis left. They were replaced by Tony Rosato, Robin Duke and Rick Moranis for Season 3 which was filmed in Edmonton, Alberta.
Greg Stillwell and his friend Bill were huge SCTV fans. One day, whilst sitting around at home, they flicked through the phone book and found an entry for a ‘J F Candy’.
Stillwell told me, “We thought, could that be him? I was a little nervous. I said ‘Give him a call Bill, give him a call’. So he did. I went into the bedroom on another phone so all three of us were on the line. Bill and John did most of the talking, and John Candy was amazing, he was just so friendly. We told him how much we loved him and he was very thankful and he said ‘Hey! Do you guys wanna meet for lunch?’ We went Downtown Toronto, he had an office on Prince Arthur Avenue, in what was previously a living room of a big house. There was a big long wooden meeting table, we went in there and I was a nervous wreck. But he was so warm and relaxed, he sat at the end of the table with his back to the living room window. At the time I used to smoke cigarettes, so we all lit up, I was getting a light from Bill and my hand was shaking like a leaf. Within seconds he was talking about his career and things that were going on with him at that time and within 15 minutes I felt like I’d known him forever. We must have sat there for an hour and a half.
“He had just left SCTV at that time. He talked about 1941, the movie with Dan (Aykroyd). He said it was slow moving but it was a beginning, a start, not the biggest part but something. He told us to call and we’d have lunch again, he let us come and see him at the office many times.”
After John moved offices Stillwell didn’t see him for a while, luckily tickets to John’s new show Big City Comedy were free and they got to reconnect.
Big City Comedy was a break out vehicle for John, he wanted his own show where he was the host. Picked up by CTV, John had a team of comedians working with him on Big City Comedy, including regulars Tino Insana, Tim Kazurinsky, Don Lamont, Audrie Neean and Patti Oatman. On the writing side John was working with Michael Short (Martin’s brother), Jim Staahl and Jim Fisher.
Tim Kazurinsky met John after co-writing the pilot for Big City Comedy, Kazurinsky told me, “The show was to be shot in Canada and they needed some American talent in the cast so I was one of the lucky Yanks.
“We shot the pilot at the Osmonds’ studio in Orem, Utah. John was brilliant. His energy carried us through. He was not just the star of the show, he was head cheerleader as well as chief cook and bottle-washer. I was in awe of his magnetism and his energy.
“We were deep into Mormon country… a place where the Latter Day Saints folk consider it a sin to partake of caffeine, nicotine and alcohol. After a couple of tense days, John went to Merle Osmond, I believe it was Merle… so many Osmonds…, and told him that if we were not provided with a coffee machine, some ash trays, and the address of some place we could get beer — the pilot would never get finished!
“John got it all… immediately. And we had a blast making that pilot. The wonderful and brilliant Ann Ryerson did the pilot with us but did not do the series because of her pregnancy.
“Guest hosts included Betty White, Fred Willard, McLean Stevenson, Billy Crystal, and Rita Moreno — who was wonderful — but slapped me every time I cursed. And the crew were the best. Especially Juul Haalmeyer and his mom (Trudy)[1], just hilarious, lovely folk. Not for a single minute did it seem like work. It was more like a paid vacation.”
In theory the show should have been a smash hit, unfortunately though it never really took off and was cancelled after one season. This was no fault of John’s or the other cast members, due to the time of day the show was aired in the US it needed to be a family friendly show and gave very little control to John, he just couldn’t make the show what he wanted it to be.
Juul Haalmeyer had previously worked with John and was thrilled to be assigned to Big City Comedy. “John was just always one big hug, that is the way I think of John, one big hug. He was always so up and so lovely and since the day I met him when he was very young, he was always just a beautiful person.
“I met him first on The David Steinberg Show when I really didn’t know my ass from my elbow as I had never really done costume design, but they put up with me and they were very tolerant of me, including John, whatever I put him in he was fine with it, so I was like ok, I have got a career going here. No one slapped me around.
“John was always so good, when we were doing Big City Comedy he knew I could sing, but I couldn’t act for a piece of shit. He wanted me to do a couple of openings for the show where he wanted me to sing. I have a very wide vocal range even though I have never had any training and he said why don’t you do the opening bit, with a grand piano and a high falsetto, so I did, and he said ‘just fall off the piano stool at the end’. It was his way of including me in the show which was great.”
Haalmeyer remembered, “John agreed to host the wrap party for Big City Comedy at his farm in Queensville. He invited all 88 people or however many it was to his house. So I called him the day before and I said ‘John are you really prepared to cater for 88 people at your house?’ and he said, ‘I have so many freezers full of chicken and steaks’, and I said ‘OK and what else?’, ‘Oh I never even thought of that.’ He said ‘you’re coming tomorrow right? Can you pick up all the romaine lettuce you can find so we can have caesar salad, and anything else that goes with a caesar?’ I said ‘OK’. Then I called him back shortly after and I said, ‘What are you going to drink if you are going to have a party?’, he replied ‘Well I have got lots of wine and beer here’, I said ‘And? Do you have lots of glasses to serve the wine in and do you have knives and forks?’ And he says ‘No Juul, but you live around the corner from that party store in Summerhill right? Could you pick me up plates, plastic glasses, knives and forks and stuff’, ‘Yeah sure’. We got to John’s house and with the amount of lettuce I had bought, his mother and I started washing the lettuce in the bathtub because it was such a huge amount, it was ridiculous. We ended up having to put it in bin bags with the salad dressing just to toss it all together. It was like John, yes this is you, big and over the top, lovely, well intentioned, not too well thought out. He was just so honest, it was exactly the way he was. You didn’t have to worry about those details as long as the intention was good – which it always was.”
Everyone at that party had such a good time they had to all sleep over. Haalmeyer had an idea to house them all in the large barns outside - however when he checked, they were full of cars John was collecting. So everyone slept where they could find floor space. Oh how I would have loved to have been at that party.
After Big City Comedy, Kazurinsky and John stayed good friends. Kazurinsky remembers, “One of my favorite memories of John occurred when I was visiting him on the set of a film in Los Angeles. While I was there, the big-time Hollywood director of the film publicly abused a crew member who had made a mistake… really tore him a new asshole in front of everybody.
“Afterwards, I saw John walk over to the director and I eaves-dropped while John, quietly but firmly, told the director that he never wanted to see any public humiliation like that happen EVER again. John said, ‘You will speak to every member of this crew the same way you speak to me. With respect. And if you don’t, I will walk off this set.’
“How many times had I ever seen something like that? How about ‘never’.
“What does that tell you about the kind of human being John Candy was?”
As Big City Comedy didn’t last a season, John went back to SCTV, as did O’Hara to do Season 4, whilst Duke and Rosato went to SNL. SCTV had been off the air for a year but was finally picked up by
NBC. However there was a catch, NBC wanted a 90-minute programme to fill their Friday night slot, so SCTV was now called SCTV Network 90. They were still filming in Edmonton and basically the group were having to come up with material and film 90 minutes worth every week. Juul Haalmeyer, their costume designer, remembers, “The whole experience of working on SCTV was the highlight of my life. Being around all of those wonderful people for that length of time, and it was especially terrific having worked with John on so many projects before that, but it just came to fruition on SCTV, all of those people together at the same time and having the privilege to be in the same environment as they were – it was magical. It was exhausting because we were working over 110 hours a week, but it didn’t matter. I wouldn’t have done it for anybody else but that group of people.”
By Season 4, filming had moved back to Toronto and Martin Short joined them, although part way through O’Hara, Thomas and Moranis would leave. John loved SCTV but by the end of Season 5 he felt like he had gone stagnant. In interviews he spoke many times about how he didn’t feel like he had much left to offer as he had been doing it so long. Once SCTV turned in SCTV Network 90 - that was 90 minutes of comedy a week they were having to write and film, which basically equates to a film a week, that was very hard to sustain long term. It was time for him to move on.
Searching for Candy Page 6
