Despite only having a small role, John Candy could’ve made a potential fortune from his beloved cameo appearance in Home Alone - but instead, took home less than $500.
Candy was at the height of his fame in 1990 when he agreed to make a cameo appearance in a low-budget Christmas movie called Home Alone, directed by Christopher Columbus and produced by his close friend, John Hughes.
Hughes had helped give the actor his big break in the decade prior, and the two had worked on numerous films together throughout the 80s.
So when his friend offered him the chance to play Gus Polinski - the friendly Polka band leader who helps Kevin’s mom, Kate McCallister, get back to her son in Chicago - Candy was happy to flex his natural improv skills and turned in a brief but memorable performance consisting entirely of ad-libbed dialogue.
According to Candy’s biographer Martin Knelman, when Hughes offered the role to his friend he suggested that the actor take a small slice of the film’s profits as a show of goodwill.
But Candy instead turned down the offer, telling Hughes that he would do the role as a favor to his friend, and accepted a fee of just $414 for his cameo, according to Insider.
It was a decision that potentially cost him thousands - if not, millions.
Nobody expected Home Alone to become the commercial juggernaut it did, grossing over $476.7 million from a budget of just $18 million, and its success ended up causing a bit of a rift between Hughes and Candy.
Speaking to Insider in 2020, director Chris Columbus spoke of Candy’s performance and said: "He was on the movie for only one day, but it resulted in so much great improvisation. None of that stuff was in the script.
“The funeral-parlor story, that was all improvised at 4:30 in the morning. We could barely keep a straight face on set just listening to John.”
But later in the interview, the director admitted: “There was certainly a little resentment on John's part” about his fee, and said when the two worked together again on the film Only the Lonely there were "a couple times on set when he would make a cutting remark about Fox and what he was paid."
Negotiations were apparently in place for Candy’s character to return in 1992’s Home Alone 2: Lost In New York, but the idea fizzled out after terms couldn’t be agreed upon.
Eventually, Candy and Hughes started to drift apart, and with the actor’s tragic death in 1994 at the age of just 42, the two never managed to have a proper reconciliation. Hughes reportedly took the news badly, and the death of Candy was reportedly a factor in the filmmaker’s decision to stop directing movies before his own death in 2009.
"He talked a lot about how much he loved Candy - if Candy had lived longer, I think John would have made more films as a director", Vince Vaughn, a friend of Hughes, told Vanity Fair following the director’s death.
So there you have it - not only was Candy paid just $414 for his role, but he also improvised most of his lines and was finished by the end of the day!
