Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

I remember the day. It was sometime in the summer of 1980 and my aunt Gwen and my cousin Heather had just come back from shopping at Famous-Barr, a St. Louis department store, and Heather was holding a big bag of jellybeans. Jellybeans happen to be my second favorite candy, a distant second mind you behind Rolo’s. But these Jellybeans were different she would tell me. These were gourmet jellybeans like such a thing exist. And they cost like three dollars a pound or something outrageous like that. So I ask for some, she said no, and as I was prone to do back then I did some things to persuade her to see things my way, things she still holds against me to this very day, but I got to try me some gourmet jellybeans. Simply amazing. Rolo’s are still my favorite candy but now the Jellybean, all thanks to David Klein and his amazing creation the Jelly Belly, is now and forever a close second as opposed to being a distant second. At least that was before I saw this documentary ‘Candyman: The David Klein Story’ that solidifies the notion that nice guys do indeed finish last.

David Klein’s son Bert, who also served as a producer on this film, largely narrates the story of this rise and fall of his old man, born in New York but raised in California and is one of those ‘idea guys’. If you’ve ever known an ‘idea guy’ they are some pretty amazing people. They are always thinking of stuff, theories, schemes, concepts and most of what they think of is usually pretty wacky but every once in a while the idea guy will hit on something. By all accounts David Klein is smart guy with most of his ideas being pretty good but somewhere along the line David Klein decided to enter the candy business and soon after that David Klein had the idea to reinvigorate the jellybean. Part of the joy of this movie is listening to Klein reproduce these scenarios and how they occurred so I cannot do them justice by describing them to you here, but it is pretty amazing to witness these verbal recreations of past scenarios.

Sure enough David Klein invents the Jelly Belly. Like most businesses there were some growing pains, I mean a pound of jelly beans might run you fifty cents and paying two bucks was asking a lot of Joe Consumer, but after yet another of David Klein’s clever marketing ideas… the game had been changed forever.

Director Costa Botes peppers his film with shots of Klein showing up in various odd garb on television shows selling his product, acting a fool, doing whatever was in his power to market his amazing jellybean and in no time demand easily outdistanced the ability to produce.

Then the story starts to get a little sad. First David Klein gets taken advantage of by a business associate who snatches the Jelly Belly license from him, but that situation worked itself out a bit. Then Klein, a showman, a genius, a marketing maverick but clearly no businessman, gives away half of his company in an effort to help out a family member. David Klein helping folks is a recurring theme in this film. Finally and inexplicably, with his company showing signs of going nowhere but up, David Klein caves into pressure and sells him company for around five million dollars. Nobody likes lawyers, I know this, but they do serve a purpose. Why Klein and his partner would sign a contract that wasn’t read by a lawyer for either party will forever remain one of life’s great mysteries.

‘Candyman: The David Klein Story’ is a documentary film in the truest sense in that it simply documents. There are no good guys or bad guys, the filmmakers do not seem to have a predetermined agenda, they just have a story to tell us and this story is a fascinating one. David Klein, the man, is an interesting case study and good luck in figuring this odd guy out. Clearly his son Bert has been struggling with this for the majority of his life and probably offers the best insight on his father, calling him a man addicted to glory and loyalty, but not necessarily money. I’m sure David Klein wouldn’t mind having some of the 160 million dollars in annual revenue that the flavorful concoction he invented is reported to generate but we think he’d be more pleased with simply being mentioned in the Jelly Belly literature as the creator of the product. Obviously he’s not mentioned and David Klein has been footnoted by history.

If I had a couple of issues with this doc one would be the underdeveloped issues between father and son with Bert mentioning some of the problems that his father had with him personally, the man falling into depression and taking out his frustrations on his family but that side of David Klein we never got to see in any kind of depth. Bert Klein touched on it slightly, but mostly it was swept under the rug. More curious though was the almost complete omission of Klein’s daughter who showed up briefly near the end and who works for her father to this day. It is possible that the young woman just didn’t want anything to with this, staying largely on the periphery, but I’m sure she had some stories to tell.

I imagine I could also question the occasional appearance of Weird Al Yankovick in this movie. I guess it does help to have a celebrity on board to market these things but Weird Al? Whose main qualification for this spot was that he used to eat Jelly Belly’s? Like everybody else on the planet earth? Was Gallagher busy that day? Carrot Top unavailable? I got Jimmy Walker on speed dial next time you cats need a celeb to stick in your doc. Nothing but mad love for Weird Al though.

Regardless, great movie. Now everybody from Starburst to Hawaiian Punch to Jolly Rancher all make ‘gourmet jellybeans’ and it’s all because of David Klein, a man who apparently only lives to help other people only to find that this life approach has gotten the poor man kicked in the ass on more than one occasion. I guess nice guys do finish last, but I’m guessing David Klein also probably sleeps pretty good at night which isn’t a bad trade-off, all things considered.