Mac, with 15 years under his belt, came out with the confidence that dominated much of his work and boldly told the bloodthirsty crowd “I ain’t scared of you muthafuckas.” From there on, he pretty much owned them, killing the audience rather than they killing him.
Mac had to follow a comic who bombed so bad he was booed off the stage. He advised him to reveal more of what’s buried within, because “that’s the only stuff that really counts.” A year later, Bernie Mac won a nationwide Miller Lite Comedy Search, earning a check of $3,000.Ī breakout performance on HBO’s Def Comedy Jam introduced him to America. Foxx told Mac that he was funny but that he worried too much about being liked.
He opened for Redd Foxx and Slappy White in Las Vegas. Late in 1989, the gates of showbiz began to break open for Bernie Mac. Mac grew to be a draw in Chicago, selling out venues that normally require a comic had graduated to New York or Los Angeles prior.
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For one of his first professional gigs, Mac was so broke that he borrowed a suit from his brother. In the 80s, he labored in relative obscurity, though he was a fixture of the Chicago scene, performing everywhere, not just clubs, but also on ‘L’ train platforms and parks for spare change.
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In between his gigs, he worked a variety of jobs including as a janitor, school bus driver, a delivery truck driver and a furniture mover. He nearly graduated Chicago Vocational Career Academy with the title “Class Clown” but he turned it down, citing that he was a comedian rather than performing the foolish antics of a clown.īernie Mac first started performing as a comedian in 1977 when he was only 19. Mac’s comedic sense was honed while young.
After he saw her crying mother cheered up by a performance by Bill Cosby, Mac told his mother that he would be a comedian so that maybe she would “never cry again.” He lost his mother to breast cancer at 16, being only a sophomore in high school. Mac’s mother was his initial inspiration to become a comedian. Raised in Chicago’s South Side, Bernard Jeffrey McCollough, late shortened to Bernie Mac, was part of a large family.