TASTE OF CANDY : A Master of Comic Exaggeration : John Candy, who died Friday, wasn’t hostile; his core of sweetness turned his escapades into jovial pagan romps.

John Candy was reportedly playing a hapless wagon master in the comedy Western “Wagons East” when he died suddenly Friday in Durango, Mexico, at age 43. The idea of Candy as wagon master is already enough to split your stitches.

Candy was a great big bundle of comic exaggeration. Everything about his funniness was outsized--in his movies, and “SCTV” appearances, his appetite for victuals was matched by his appetite for grievance, babes and clamor. And yet there was nothing bulldozing or hostile about the way Candy came across. Even at his most tantrum-tossed, he had a core of sweetness that turned his escapades into jovial pagan romps.

It was this sweetness that allowed his smooth transition into the movie world of family-entertainment comedy in the last decade after a glorious seven-year run as a John-of-all-trades on “SCTV.” Candy’s film career made him a star, with hits ranging from “Splash” to “Cool Runnings,” but for the most part Hollywood domesticated his wilder nutty lunges.

He would appear in John Hughes vehicles such as “Uncle Buck” that seemed intent on turning him into a huggy bear. After too many outings in such films as “Summer Rental,” “Volunteers” and “The Great Outdoors,” Candy himself may have felt he was primed for less cuddly fare, and he turned in surprisingly moving performances in “Only the Lonely,” where he was convincingly lovelorn, and in “JFK,” in a strong cameo as a sleazy New Orleans tipster. Amid the kid-stuff japery of “Cool Runnings,” he came through as the Jamaican bobsledders’ disgraced coach with some resonant low notes.

But, although Candy appeared to be working toward a greater emotional range in his movies, it’s the full-out comic moments that everyone remembers. As Tom Hanks’s older brother in “Splash,” Candy was a ribald sleazoid whose high point comes when he bluffs his way through a security checkpoint by speaking Danish. (He learned Danish watching Danish porn.) In “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles,” the best of his Hughes vehicles, Candy’s hulky, shambling grace played off Steve Martin’s high-anxiety aggravations like a great vaudeville act. The scene where they are compelled to share a barely queen-sized motel bed is a classic case of hot-wired, slow-burned comedy. Candy is oblivious to the roll and pitch he is causing. He regards the cramped quarters as an opportunity for togetherness.

*

Candy’s greatest moments, however, were reserved for his “SCTV” career, which stretched from 1976 to 1983. His gallery of creeps and clowns was almost deliriously inspired. There was Johnny LaRue, with his maligned mustache and smoking jackets, forever grousing to try out new shows on the network. (On LaRue’s exercise show, he would do a few pullups and head for the fridge.) As LaRue in “Polynesian Town,” a takeoff on “Chinatown,” he played a J. J. Gittes character who walked around in a grass skirt and went undercover in a Polynesian eatery scouting for poisoned ribs.

He was Dr. Tongue on “Monster Chiller Horror Theater,” appearing in such 3-D House of Horror Classics as “3-D House of Stewardesses” and “3-D House of Slave Chicks.” He was Roger Ebert to Joe Flaherty’s Gene Siskel as he reviewed the fictitious, totally silent and totally awful Robert Altman film “Henry,” about a man fishing off a pier. He was the Ed McMahon-like second banana to Flaherty’s Sammy Maudlin. (His rollicking yuks betrayed a resentment that led to his walking off the show, Jack Paar style.) He was farm guy Billy Sol Hurok on “Farm Film Celebrity Blow-Up,” blowing up “real good” the likes of Neil Sedaka and Meryl Streep.

Best of all, perhaps, were his takeoffs of Orson Welles, overeating on the Merv Griffin show, or of Alfred Hitchcock and Ben-Hur, who both ended up, inexplicably, inevitably, turning into Curly of the Three Stooges.

Candy, at his best, was more like 300 stooges--all of them vivid in their knockabout nuttiness.

Salute to Candy

Cable’s Comedy Central will salute the late John Candy with an all-Candy block of programming tonight.

It kicks off at 9 p.m. with “Tribute to John Candy,” an hourlong collection of clips of Candy’s work. The rest of the night--through 4 a.m.--will be filled with episodes of “SCTV,” featuring memorable Candy sketches.