Dan Aykroyd Tricked John Candy Into Auditioning for Second City

John Candy was clearly one of the greatest and most lovable comedic performers of all time, as evidenced thanks by his work on SCTV and in classic movies like Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Uncle Buck and Spaceballs. He’s even fun to watch in bombs like Michael Moore’s dismal, but sadly prophetic, Canadian Bacon.

So it’s pretty shocking to learn that the late star had to be duped into trying out sketch comedy for the first time.

The new documentary John Candy: I Like Me, which just premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, features a ton of interviews with Candy’s friends and collaborators, including Tom Hanks, Catherine O’Hara and Martin Short. And we hear a lot from one of the key figures in his early career: future vodka magnate Dan Aykroyd. 

As Aykroyd reveals in the doc, he first befriended Candy while they were both working in the not-so-lucrative field of 1970s Canadian children’s entertainment. 

But when it was announced that Chicago’s renowned improv comedy outfit, The Second City, would be opening a location in Toronto, Aykroyd and his comedy partner Valri Bromfield decided to audition. Candy was reticent about trying out improv comedy, so Aykroyd and Bromfield went and signed him up anyway without his knowledge.

“We were all kind of scared of the audition,” Aykroyd admitted in Laughing on the Outside: The Life of John Candy by Martin Knelman. The pair invited Candy to come with them for lunch, and then to the audition, supposedly for moral support. “Unbeknownst to me, Dan and Valri put my name down on the list,” Candy explained in an interview. “My name was called. They pushed me into a room. Sweat was all over me.”

In John Candy: I Like Me, O’Hara recalls that Candy’s scene partner in the audition was way too chatty. But rather than attempt to talk over him, Candy simply listened attentively, which is what ultimately won him a spot — now with the Toronto cast, along with Aykroyd and Bromfield, but with Second City’s main troupe in Chicago.

“As soon as they saw him on stage, they were thrilled,” Aykroyd noted. “More thrilled, in truth, than they were with Valri and me.”

Landing Second City is what led to Candy’s role in SCTV, which then paved the way for his movie career. And it may not have happened if not for Aykroyd and Bromfield’s well-meaning duplicity.

Okay, now we get why John Candy would agree to play multiple roles in Aykroyd’s unmitigated disaster of a vanity project, Nothing But Trouble.