That great comic actor John Candy, who died in 1994 at the tragically young age of 43, wasn’t just liked by his legion of fans and those who knew him personally.
He was loved. His inherent warmth, sweetness and vulnerability, qualities apparent both on screen and in real life, are celebrated in Paul Myers’ John Candy: A Life in Comedy, a fairly workmanlike yet touchingly sincere biography featuring insightful contributions from famous friends such as Dan Aykroyd, Steve Martin and Catherine O’Hara (who we also lost recently).
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Candy, whose father also died young, almost certainly felt like he was living on borrowed time. He struggled constantly with his weight and anxiety issues. He was also generous, kind and very talented. As Myers writes in his prologue: “It is virtually impossible to find anyone with a bad word to say about him.”
Despite the author’s shortcomings – he’s unfortunately prone to clunky cliché – one nevertheless emerges from this book feeling a profound sense of loss. John Candy was a genuinely good and decent man who made people happy.
John Candy: A Life in Comedy by Paul Myers is out now (House of Anansi Press, £21.99). You can buy it from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.
