What The Final Year Of John Candy's Life Was Really Like

John Candy will be remembered for the laughter he brought to the world — first onstage at Second City in Toronto during his youth, then on television with the seminal "SCTV," and then on the big screen with hilarious supporting roles in "Stripes" and "Splash" and in such starring vehicles as "Uncle Buck" and "Planes, Trains and Automobiles." 

He died in 1994 in Durango, Mexico, where he was shooting "Wagons East" — tragically becoming one of several actors to have passed away while filming. The months leading up to his death had been challenging for the 43-year-old comedian. His once-hot career had started to fizzle, fueling anxiety that he was on a downward trajectory in Hollywood. Late film critic Roger Ebert may be remembered for his brutal movie takedowns, but he felt nothing but sympathy when he encountered Candy in a New York City bar, where the actor drank alone. "He was depressed. People loved him, but he didn't seem to know that, or it wasn't enough,"  Ebert wrote. "He was a sweet guy and nobody had a word to say against him, but he was down on himself."

The period leading up to his passing was one of highs and lows, apt for an actor whose large frame was overshadowed by his even-larger personality. To find out more, read on for an exploration of what the final year of John Candy's life was really like.

John Candy burst into Hollywood with a splash — literally, earning rave reviews as Tom Hanks' brother in Ron Howard's "Splash." That led to a bump from supporting roles in films to starring in them. By 1994, however, Candy's resume was littered with a string of flops, leaving him fearful his time in the spotlight had come and gone. 

That was the frame of mind that Candy was in when he called up screenwriter Tommy Swerdlow, who was working on the script for "Cool Runnings," the movie Candy hoped would turn things around for him. "I need this thing to be really good. Understand? I need it to be really good for me," Candy told Swerdlow, who wrote about the experience on Substack. "I'm nobody. I'm nobody in this town ... I'm nothing ... I'm nobody. I'm dog boy. I'm dog boy in this town ..." he continued; it wasn't until later that Swerdlow realized Candy dissing himself as "dog boy" was a reference to Barf, the "mawg" (half man, half dog) character he'd played in Mel Brooks' "Spaceballs."

According to Swerdlow, the low point that Candy had hit was made all the more painful by the heights he had achieved. "Poor guy was a mess," Swerdlow observed. "The big offers had dried up ... Only someone who has experienced that kind [of] love and adoration can so deeply feel its absence." 

John Candy had pinned his hopes for a Hollywood comeback on "Cool Runnings," and the film (inspired by the true story of the Jamaican bobsled team during the 1988 Winter Olympics) delivered — to a point. With largely positive reviews, "Cool Runnings" may not have been the blockbuster he'd hoped, but it was a winner for Disney, bringing in $68 million at the box office while costing a modest $14 million to make.

After such outright bombs as "Nothing but Trouble," "Who's Harry Crumb," and "Delirious," "Cool Runnings" was certainly a step in the right direction for Candy. Sadly, he would not have much time to capitalize on the goodwill generated by the film's success. "Cool Runnings" was released in October 1993, just a few months before Candy's tragic death during the production of "Wagons East."

Interestingly, Candy wasn't the first choice of the film's director, Jon Turteltaub, to play the team's coach, Irv Blitzer. As Turteltaub told USA Today, he'd had Kurt Russell in mind to play Irv and initially balked when the studio suggested Candy for the role because "John Candy doesn't look like a gold medalist." Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was then chairman of Walt Disney Studios, squashed those plans when he told Turteltaub that they'd already decided on Candy and the director had zero influence on that decision. "To which I said, 'Great! I love John Candy,'" Turteltaub recalled.

When John Candy arrived in Calgary to shoot "Cool Runnings," his career was at a low ebb. Candy's lack of confidence was evident to co-star Malik Yoba, who later recalled Candy telling him why he never took any vacations. "He said it was because he was afraid he'd never work again. That always stuck with me," Yoba told The Independent. "He was very insecure about his place in the Hollywood ecosystem. Most people would never imagine that would be the case for the great John Candy — but it was." 

Director Jon Turteltaub also sensed Candy's anxiety while making "Cool Runnings." "I know he had fears about his career and how he was perceived by people," Turteltaub said, recalling that trait manifested in Candy's inability to turn down any fan's request for an autograph because of his intense desperation to be liked. "It's a bit clichéd that the funny guy might not be the happy guy, but there's a little truth to that," he observed. "John was a fun, happy person, but if you got really deep, there was a lot of sadness and anger under there."

Even after he became a Hollywood star, John Candy remained deeply connected to his hometown of Toronto. One of his proudest moments, in fact, was when he joined forces with Canadian hockey superstar Wayne Gretzky and LA Kings owner Bruce McNall to purchase the Toronto Argonauts in 1991. A lifelong fan of the Canadian Football League team, Candy was thrilled to be a co-owner. 

He was also hands-on. Even though he only owned a 20% stake (purchased for $1 million), he was a constant presence with the team, both in the Argos' offices and on the sidelines of games. "He loved the players; he loved the coaches and the trainers," Gretzky said of Candy when interviewed for "Year of the Rocket: John Candy, Wayne Gretzky, a Crooked Tycoon, and the Craziest Season in Football History," via an excerpt in the Toronto Star.

After an initial burst of success, the Argos struggled to make money. McNall, who'd been bankrolling the team, was running out of cash. Candy was in Mexico shooting "Wagon's East" in February 1994 when he received a phone call informing him that McNall was selling the team. "I wouldn't go so far as to say the color went out of his face, but it was close," said Candy's assistant, Bob Crane Jr., who was next to him when he took that call. "This was a cold, corporate, 'we're dumping this.' He deserved better than that."

John Candy had always dealt with issues concerning his weight but never more so than in the final year of his life. An episode about Candy in the TV docuseries "Autopsy: The Last Hours of ..." recalled Candy's heartbreak at having his beloved Toronto Argonauts yanked away from him. His reaction was to turn to what had always comforted him in the past: food and alcohol. The show referenced reports that he responded to news of the Argos sale by going on a two-day drinking binge, downing shot after shot of tequila. "He certainly was capable of a big night out, and he could drink a lot — and often did," Dr. Joe Guse said in that episode.

Candy also had a habit of greeting anxiety with binge-eating, a habit he'd carried with him from childhood to his adult life. "When John was feeling anxious or depressed or down, he would turn to food," Candy's lifelong friend Jonathan O'Mara said in "Autopsy." He would also binge-eat in response to bad reviews — which had become increasingly plentiful in the final years of his life. "He was very, very prone to binge-eating and eating awful foods," Dr. Guse told "Autopsy."

During the final year of his life, John Candy also branched out into another area of showbiz. Stepping behind the camera for the first time, he made his directorial debut with "Hostage for a Day," a made-for-TV movie starring "Cheers" alum George Wendt. Candy also had a small role in the project, playing a Russian mobster.  

Sadly, the film didn't make it to television screens until about a month after its director's passing — and Candy never got the chance to see a review in Variety that praised his fledgling directorial effort, noting the film was "unexpectedly brushed with an onscreen midlife melancholy that echoes the loss of Candy while underscoring his aborted promise as a director." On the other hand, Empire's review was a bit harsher: "This made-for-TV film is the first and last film with John Candy as director, proving that he was a lot more adept in front of the camera than behind it."

According to the late comedian's son, the Ontario-shot film held a special place in Candy's heart. "It may not be the best representation of his work, but he loved the fact that he got to direct 'Hostage for a Day,'" Chris Candy told The Hollywood Reporter. "He was really proud of that."

The final year of John Candy's life was hectic. Not only was he still involved with his beloved Toronto Argonauts (prior to the team's sale, at least) and directing his first film, but he also starred in two movies. Prior to heading to Mexico to shoot "Wagons East," Candy had filmed "Canadian Bacon," the first (and so far only) scripted narrative movie from documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, director of such docs as "Roger and Me," "Bowling for Columbine," and "Fahrenheit 9/11."

In "Canadian Bacon" — released the year after Candy's passing — he plays a small-town American sheriff who winds up in the middle of an escalating conflict between Canada and the U.S., manipulated by the American president ("M*A*S*H" star Alan Alda) in the hopes of boosting his flagging popularity. Sadly, the final film in Candy's canon was a critical and commercial flop. As Canadian arts journalist David Gilmour told Moore during a somewhat contentious CBC interview, some critics outright hated the film. "They think it's amateurishly shot, badly directed, and not funny — which is a problem for a comedy," Gilmour said.

John Candy had accepted a $3-million offer to star in "Wagons East," with filming to begin in January 1993 in Durango, Mexico. Before leaving, he underwent a medical examination and was deemed healthy enough for production to move forward. 

One of the things we learned about Candy after his death was that he experienced significant physical struggles while making the movie. Because it was a Western, he was required to ride a horse in the blazing sun while wearing heavy period clothing — including a fringed buckskin coat. "People are noticing he's not well," said Dr. Joe Guse in "Autopsy: The Last Hours of ..." Crew members on the set couldn't help but be aware of Candy's labored breathing and profuse sweating. "It was difficult when the heat came on hard," recalled Mitch Masoner, who worked as a driver on the film. 

That extreme heat and excessive perspiration put additional strain on Candy's heart. Another complicating factor was that the location of the set was at a higher altitude than he was used to, situated at 6,500 feet above sea level. "This would explain why John was struggling for breath," noted the show's resident forensic pathologist, Dr. Michael Hunter. 

John Candy's weight had been a major factor in his life, and he would repeat predictable patterns of crash-dieting and binge-eating. By the time he began filming "Wagons East," he reportedly weighed in the vicinity of 350 pounds, the heaviest he'd ever been. "He always worked on his weight and his health," Candy's son, Chris, told The Hollywood Reporter, noting the family's history of heart disease — particularly the tragic death of John Candy's father, who died when the future comedian was just 5 years old. "His father had a heart attack, his brother had a heart attack," Chris observed. "It was in the family."

He was also a heavy smoker, a habit he'd picked up as a teenager and hadn't been able to kick. "When I first met John he was already smoking," pal Jonathan O'Mara, who'd known Candy since they were 15, told "Autopsy." "I think he was smoking about a pack a day when he was 17, 18. John never did give up the smokes." 

Interestingly, Candy's "Wagons East" co-star Richard Lewis didn't think Candy was smoking excessively while they worked together. Lewis told Entertainment Weekly that "he didn't appear to be chain-smoking at all and he was losing the weight."

Despite the discomfort he was experiencing while filming "Wagons East" due to heat and his breathing difficulties, John Candy did have some enjoyable times on the set. Production was in the home stretch during the final day of Candy's life, with just 10 days of filming to go and all his major scenes in the can. Candy's co-star in the film, comedian Richard Lewis, told Entertainment Weekly that he and Candy "were jumping up and down like we had just finished a great scene. It was a wonderful moment and it turned into one of the worst experiences of my life."

According to People, witnesses who watched Candy and Lewis film that particular scene felt that Candy had delivered the performance of his career. "I don't know if he was excited to work on it or wasn't," the late actor's son, Chris Candy, told The Hollywood Reporter. "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."

Three days before John Candy's death, the cast and crew were looking forward to wrapping the film and heading back to their respective homes. Candy, however, had never been one to say no to a party; despite his exhaustion after a long day of shooting, he joined the celebration. "We had a big crew on 'Wagons East' and there was a party in Durango, and we all, the crew, ended up showing up there, and John was there with us all," crew driver Mitch Masoner said in "Autopsy," recalling Candy was in high spirits that night. "I remember John belly-bouncing somebody, and everybody cracked up. I mean, it was hilarious to watch." 

That celebratory feeling continued during Candy's final day alive. He had felt so positive about the work that he and his co-stars had done that day, he called up the various crew members and assistants he'd worked with and invited them to his place. He proceeded to whip up a spaghetti dinner for the whole gang. "So John's had an exhausting day," said Dr. Joe Guse. "Even when John's stressed and depressed and anxious, he still decides to cook this big Italian meal for everyone around him." While enjoying dinner, Candy began complaining about pains in his chest; it was likely he simply wrote it off as heartburn. 

After finishing up his late-night pasta dinner and bidding his guests goodnight, John Candy placed a phone call to his "Wagons East" co-star Richard Lewis to share his excitement over what they'd accomplished that day. According to Lewis, he didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. "There was nothing noticeable as far as I could tell," Lewis told Entertainment Weekly, insisting he didn't feel that Candy sounded ill at all.

Candy also called actor Robert Picardo, who shared a similar recollection of Candy's exuberance. "He was like a little kid who had had a great day at camp,” Picardo told People. ”He wanted to thank us."

The next morning, Candy was gone, having died in his sleep. "It happened very quickly; it was a massive heart attack," Hector Partida, a spokesman for the Durango state government, told the Los Angeles Times. "Even the first-aid crew, when they got there, found him dead."

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues or an eating disorder, contact the relevant resources below:

• The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
  
• The National Eating Disorders Association website or contact NEDA's Live Helpline at 1-800-931-2237. You can also receive 24/7 Crisis Support via text (send NEDA to 741-741).