John Candy's Top Five SCTV characters

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by Jeffrey Bento-Carrier

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John Candy was not only one of the greatest comedians of all-time, he also appeared on what is considered by many fans and critics to be the greatest television show the small screen has ever seen.

SCTV, in all its incarnations, was an award-winning, and culturally-uplifting, mainstay on Canadian and American airwaves from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s.

For a few precious moments a week, we were transferred every Friday to a portion of our lives which did not exist in our reality, but was alive and well in our funny bone.

A big part of SCTV's appeal to the masses and comedy fans of all ages was Candy.

Candy, a early 1970s graduate of the popular Canadian version of the Second City stage show, could take a character and make it all his own, be it in drag as celebrity chef Julia Child pummelling Mr. Rogers (Martin Short) in the hilarious Battle of the PBS Network Stars; as shock tranny Divine in an ungodly outdoor tribute to Christmas, complete with dandy back-up dancers; as a Toronto Bay Leaf prospect who owes his lisp to Darryl Sittler; as a Babe Ruth look-alike who ends up pummelling an over-zealous dying child because of the pressure the snot-nose bugger was putting on his baseball game, or via the abject commercialism, and outright sleaziness, of The Guy With A Snake On His Face.

Here are my top-5 John Candy SCTV characters:

5. Mr. Mambo. Yes, not an obvious choice, but Mr. Mambo meant something special to his many fans. Mr. Mambo had a theory that no matter what gets you down, if you ‘mamboed' these negatives in your life would float carefully away like a hot Spanish breeze. Again, Candy chose to go against type to bring Mr. Mambo into our hearts.

4. Dr. Tongue. The master of 3-D used his lack of skill with special effects, and his affiliation with the classically-trained thespian hunchback Woody Tobias Jr. (Eugene Levy) to bring havoc to the big screen within a small screen. Dr. Tongue's 3-D House of Stewardesses is a personal favourite. "Rip and tear Igor! Rip and tear!"

3. Mayor Tommy Shanks: The witless, and often clueless, leader of Melonville hit too close to home for many western Canadian civic leaders in the 1980s. No wonder! The truth hurts!

2. Magnum, P.E.I.: An often-forgotten Candy creation, his action star was a hero of the soil for his times. Granted, it couldn't stand up to Magnum P.I., but the mini-skit — which portrayed a rustic crime fighter defending the lifeblood of the P.E.I. food industry — was a bit of schlock even Tom Selleck could appreciate.

1. Johnny LaRue: Yes, we all know — and loathe — the man who would be king of the film industry by trying to be Robert Evans, and a Canadian, at the same time. Johnny LaRue, as sneaky, and as talented, as he was, always wanted a crane shot for his productions as a show of respect, which in my books makes him as simple and as complex as a movie fan-turned-sleaze merchant can get. In a piece of acting genius which ranks as the greatest moment in his career, Candy/La Rue finally gets his wish on a certain Christmas Eve in Edmonton/Melonville when, in a stirring moment of videotape history, he gets what he wants from Santa — a crane of his own while heaven's angels proclaim its arrival on a cold, dark night.