"I orchestrated basically a scam to get John Candy to go and visit the [Harvard] Lampoon building," O'Brien recalled on his podcast last month. "And I got to go and get him and chauffeur him around."
O'Brien spent a day and a half taking Candy around Cambridge, and he found the great comedian kind and down-to-earth — not always a given when dealing with celebrities in general and comics in particular, who often have their dark sides. But Candy, who died of a heart attack in 1994 at age 43, according to History, left behind a wife and two children, all of whom recall him as a family man who loved rescuing animals and bringing them back to his family's farm. His two kids told The Hollywood Reporter in 2016 that their dad was also a devoted supporter of charities like the Make-a-Wish Foundation and the Pediatric AIDS Foundation, always trying to help out struggling children.
"He was everything I wanted John Candy to be in person. And, you know, sometimes that's not the case," O'Brien went on. But Candy was his goofy, amiable stage presence "times 10 — he was the John Candy that I was hoping he would be."
