Bernie Mac had a way of looking straight at an audience, eyes wide, as if he couldn’t believe what he was about to say either. Then he said it anyway. For two decades, that fearless, fed-up, deeply funny voice carried him from Chicago church banquets and open mics to sold-out arenas, a landmark sitcom and the biggest films in Hollywood. He died on August 9, 2008, at 50. The laugh he left behind hasn’t gone anywhere.
A South Side education
He was born Bernard Jeffrey McCullough on October 5, 1957, and grew up on Chicago’s South Side in a crowded household run by his mother and grandparents. The comedy started early: as a boy he told jokes at a church banquet, and his grandmother hauled him off for it. The family was strict and money was tight, and he would mine both for material for the rest of his life.
After high school he worked whatever jobs he could find and kept performing wherever anyone would let him. He married his high-school sweetheart, Rhonda, in 1977; their daughter, Je’Niece, was born the next year.
From the Cotton Club to Def Comedy Jam
His break came the slow way. He built a following in Chicago clubs, including the Cotton Club, and in 1990 he won the Miller Lite Comedy Search. Two years later he walked onto HBO’s Def Comedy Jam and delivered one of the most famous sets in the show’s history, a defiant, sweat-soaked routine that told the audience exactly who was in charge of the room.
Hollywood noticed. Small but unforgettable film parts followed, from Mo’ Money and Above the Rim to his turn as the pastor in Friday, a role that let him steal a scene in just a few minutes on screen.
One of the Kings
In 1997 he joined Steve Harvey, Cedric the Entertainer and D.L. Hughley on The Original Kings of Comedy tour, which became the highest-grossing comedy tour of its time. Spike Lee filmed it, and the 2000 concert movie introduced the four of them to audiences far beyond the clubs and theaters they had been packing. Plenty of fans walked out of that film saying the same thing: Bernie closed the show.
“America, let me tell you something”
That success led to The Bernie Mac Show, which ran on Fox from 2001 to 2006. Mac played a version of himself, a successful comic suddenly raising his sister’s three children, and he broke the fourth wall to talk directly to the viewer, whom he called “America.” The show was sharp about family, discipline and race without ever turning into a lecture. It won a Peabody Award for its first season, earned an Emmy for its writing, and brought Mac two Emmy nominations for lead actor in a comedy.
Hollywood comes calling
At the same time he became one of the most dependable presences in big-studio movies: Frank Catton in Ocean’s Eleven and its two sequels, the store detective in Bad Santa, a washed-up slugger in Mr. 3000, the disapproving father in Guess Who, plus Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, Head of State and Transformers. Whatever the size of the part, he made it his.
The final chapter
Mac lived for years with sarcoidosis, an inflammatory disease that affects the lungs, and said in 2005 that it had gone into remission. In the summer of 2008 he was hospitalized with pneumonia, and he died on August 9 at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago from complications of the illness. He was survived by Rhonda, his wife of more than 30 years, Je’Niece and a granddaughter.
His last films arrived after he was gone. Soul Men, in which he and Samuel L. Jackson played estranged soul singers on one last road trip, opened on November 7, 2008. Its cast also included Isaac Hayes, who died the day after Mac, and Affion Crockett, who talked about working with Bernie on the film in an interview from our archive.
Why he still matters
Bernie Mac never pretended to be anyone other than the man from the South Side who had worked for everything he had. His comedy was loud and blunt, but underneath it was a real point of view about family, respect and the cost of getting by. That is why The Bernie Mac Show still plays in reruns, why his Def Comedy Jam set still circulates, and why comics who came after him still name him as an influence. He told America exactly how it was, and America is still listening.
Sources: Television Academy, Encyclopedia.com, Peabody Awards.
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