The John Hughes Movie That Was Supposed To Save Kevin Bacon’s Career, and Why Almost Nobody Showed Up

Kevin Bacon is one of the most recognizable faces in Hollywood, but his career very nearly took a different path in the late 1980s, when one film was meant to rescue him. In that era, the industry saw him as a young movie star in the same mold as Brat Pack names like Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise, Sean Penn, and Charlie Sheen.

His rise had been steady. Bacon made his feature debut in ‘National Lampoon’s Animal House’ in 1978, broke out with ‘Diner’, and became a household name with ‘Footloose’ in 1984, even landing on the cover of People magazine.

The trouble was that Bacon wasn’t comfortable being a pin-up. He deliberately chose offbeat projects that cut against that image, a slump he has since admitted was of his own making.

Instead of starring in films like ‘St. Elmo’s Fire’, ‘Top Gun’ or ‘Young Guns’, he made ‘Quicksilver’, ‘White Water Summer’ and ‘End of the Line’. The last of those earned just $42,000 at the box office, and by 1988 his shot at A-list stardom was in serious trouble.

That’s when John Hughes entered the picture. Bacon’s lifeline was ‘She’s Having a Baby’, a deeply personal project drawn from Hughes’ own early years in advertising and family life. Bacon played Jake Briggs, a young copywriter who narrates the story, opposite Elizabeth McGovern, with Alec Baldwin in a supporting role.

The film follows a newlywed couple struggling with the pressures of married life and the expectation to have children. On paper, it looked like a guaranteed comeback. Hughes was the filmmaker behind ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’, ‘Weird Science’ and ‘The Breakfast Club’, and Bacon had such a good time on set that he pitched himself a cameo in Hughes’ next film, ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles’.

Then the plan backfired. Hughes shot both movies so close together that Paramount screened them before setting release dates, and the studio liked one far more than the other.

‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles’ arrived in November 1987 to rapturous reviews and strong ticket sales. ‘She’s Having a Baby’, meanwhile, landed in February 1988 into a market still dominated by holiday hits like ‘Good Morning, Vietnam’, ‘Three Men and a Baby’ and ‘Moonstruck’.

The results were grim. The film grossed about $16 million in the United States against a $20 million budget and drew mixed reviews, with Roger Ebert giving it 2 out of 4 stars. For Hughes, it was an attempt at something more grown-up that failed to connect, and for Bacon it marked his last real shot at being a conventional leading man at that point.

What makes the story so endearing is that Bacon never turned his back on the movie. Looking back in 2005, he described it as funny and heartfelt, called it Hughes’ best film in his opinion, and admitted the frustration that it simply didn’t work because nobody went to see it.

The flop didn’t end his career, but it did push him into a humbling stretch. He has recalled feeling that his professional life was close to over when he reluctantly agreed to star in ‘Tremors’, a movie about underground worms that later became a cult favorite on home video.

The real turning point came soon after. ‘Flatliners’ in 1990 gave him his first much-needed hit in years, and a small supporting role in Oliver Stone’s ‘JFK’ the following year convinced him he was on the right track.

Bacon has called ‘JFK’ a huge turning point, saying it led directly to roles in ‘The River Wild’, ‘Murder in the First ‘, and ‘A Few Good Men’. Rather than chasing leading man status, he used his remaining fame to evolve into a character actor, and that shift became the foundation of the durable career fans know today. Looking back, ‘She’s Having a Baby’ may not have saved Kevin Bacon in the way he hoped, but it helped define the instinct-driven path that eventually did.

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