My husband and I loved Bernie Mac. We watched his TV show from the first episode and fell in love. He was hysterical! Would always start off strong and "I'm an the man of the house". By the middle of the show he would look into the camera and cry; "Help America!". He was kind of the like true more realistic version of the Brady Bunch :)

And let me say I loved him in the Oceans movies. He was great! I always thought Bernie Mac was a natural entertainer. And to die at 50? That is far too young.

Dead from pneumonia at a mere 50, Mac leaves behind a legacy of great success and unfulfilled promise. We can be grateful for the hits, most notably, his influential, insufficiently appreciated sitcom The Bernie Mac Show. But as with any performer who dies while at the height of his career, you can't help thinking there would have been more to come.

Born Bernard Jeffrey McCullough in 1957 in Chicago but known to the rest of us as Bernie Mac he was, in show-biz circles, a late bloomer. He didn't come to national attention until he was already well into adulthood, and his comedy came from a decidedly adult perspective. It could be raw and blustery, but the anger and insights both came from experience, and were often softened by a warmth he could turn on and off at will.

Though he worked in TV and films though the '90s, most notably, perhaps, in the 1995 hit Friday, Mac's career didn't take off until 2000 with the Spike Lee concert film The Original Kings of Comedy. His costars at the time were probably better known: Cedric the Entertainer, D.L. Hughley and Steve Harvey. But it was Mac who broke out, challenging Hollywood to give him a sitcom a challenge met by Fox the next year with The Bernie Mac Show.

Loosely based on his own life, Mac cast him as a happily married man who becomes a not-so-happy father when he's forced to take in his sister's three young children. Addressing "America" directly through the camera, Mac let us know precisely what he thought of this and every other turn of event, while his children and his wife let us see they knew how to get around him.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2008-08-09-bernie-mac-obit_N.htm