Mac starred in the incredibly successful "Kings Of Comedy" tour and movie. He quickly became a household name with the award-winning Bernie Mac Show, multi-million dollar movies and a long stand up career, but his beginnings were far from glamorous.
One Sunday night when he was four or five, Mac found his mother crying in front of the television. She refused to explain the cause of her tears, and before her young son could press any further, Bill Cosby came onto "The Ed Sullivan Show" and started doing a routine about snakes in the bathroom.
"And my mother started laughing and crying at the same time," he says now, the story so frequently told that he could probably do it in his sleep. "And when I saw my mother laugh, I started laughing, and I wiped her face and said, 'Mom, that's what I'm gonna be. I'm gonna be a comedian, so you never have to cry again.'"
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And Mac did just that all the way up until his death in 2008. He died from Sarcoidosis, a mysterious and sometimes devastating immune system disorder that causes cells to cluster and can damage organs throughout the body. It's an ffliction that hits adults younger than 40 and disproportionately affects African-Americans, especially women. Sometimes the illness is mild and goes into remission, but sometimes it is severe and unremitting, causing progressive damage to multiple organs. Often misdiagnosed, sarcoidosis remains a little known disorder, even in the medical community.
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Bernie recounts how he first learned about it:
"I hadn’t done anything social in three years. I was over in Europe, I was over in Amsterdam, I was over in Paris, flying back here, doing that. I was working still because I didn'’t know what the heck was going on. I’m still doing 16-18 hours a day, but I felt something was wrong. I called my tour manager and he called the doctor. Then I caught pneumonia. Double pneumonia. Then they gave me this medicine that’s good for pneumonia. And the doctors are really high on this medicine. There’s one out of 100 that it [doesn’t] fit. I was the one, and it gave me toxidity."
He did his first comedy routines in his childhood bedroom, using an empty shoe polish bottle as a microphone and keeping his brothers awake with corny jokes and impressions. His mother and one of his brothers died within a year of each other, both while Mac was a teenager, and he can recite the details of his mother's fatal battle with breast cancer with the same passion and precision he uses on stage.
"My comedy comes from pain," he says. "I can't stand to see someone hurting."
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After high school he began a string of odd jobs all designed to sustain he and wife, Rhonda, while he chased his stand-up dreams.
He was a janitor, a professional mover, a school bus driver for handicapped children and a...
... fast food restaurant manager. He briefly spent his days telling jokes and doing impressions on the El trains, but despite a daily take that he estimates at $400, he gave it up "because I felt like a bum."
At the end of a long day's work, he would go to a comedy club, write his name on the board and wait for his turn to come. For years, it either wouldn't come at all or wouldn't come until there were two people left in the building - "Me and the janitor."
No matter how many people were left in the audience, Mac would get on stage and do his routine. The hard work literally paid off in 1990, when he won $3,000 in a local comedy contest. At the time, he was working as a sales rep for Wonder Bread, but the more popular he became on the club circuit, the less he wanted to push bread to pay the bills.
On the day before Thanksgiving, his thoughts were consumed by the three standing ovations he'd received the night before. He dumped his entire load of bread at only five stores - "They had bread in the frozen food department, that's how much bread I gave them all" - called his boss and quit.
"I've created Bernie Mac," he says, "the guy who'll go out and say any g- damn thing. So when the people wrote (about the Original Kings movie), 'Bernie Mac was hard, Bernie Mac was blue, Bernie Mac was raunchy,' I didn't get angry, I didn't get upset. Because I knew it was another side of Bernie that you all just had no idea of knowing.
"When I put the mic away, I'm done with that guy. That guy that you're talking to now is not the guy on stage. It takes me 15 minutes to get into that guy. It takes me 30 minutes to let go, because he's so aggressive, he's so non-stop. Bernie Mac is relentless. That's one thing I like about him. He's not PC. He doesn't care what you think. He's going out there to please that audience."
In addition to his Hollywood Star Mac is being honored at this year's LOL Comedy Honors on Aug. 24, where the Bernie Mac Comedy Award will be presented to a comedian.
"I always just went on to let him shine. And I think for me, this a way for me to come out and also shine too," Bernie's wife, Rhonda McCullough said. "I'm going to do what he started, and I'm going to finish what he started."
McCullough also mentioned that she and the foundation are working on getting Mac a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
A man widely known for his comedic and personal authenticity, Mac had the ability to "brighten a room" upon entry. Rhonda added that Mac, who was known as "Uncle Bernie" on his network television show, was a "family man" by nature. The pair were high school sweethearts and knew each other for more than 30 years, and McCullough said that is what drives her to continue promoting his legacy.
"Even though Bernie is not here physically, he's always with me, and I just have to keep making him proud each and every day," Mrs. McCullough said. "I'm always going to support him and uphold him and everything he stood for. … And I want him to know I'm here, no matter what."
As ones closest to him say, "We know he's in heaven now making even the angels laugh."
For more on the Bernie Mac Foundation for Sarcoidosis, visit here.
