By: Jackie Jones
People began sleeping outside Friday night to be sure they had a seat. They started lining up outside the doors about four hours before the noon event started.
About 7,000 people poured into the 10,000-seat House of Hope on Bishop Ford Freeway in Chicago to bid farewell to Bernie Mac, one of the "Original Kings of Comedy."
His brothers in royalty -- D.L. Hughley, Cedric the Entertainer and Steve Harvey -- broke down at times as they paid tribute to Mac, who died Aug. 9 at age 50 of complications from pneumonia. But they also broke it down and kept the congregation laughing.
“I was laughing so hard at times, it was hard to take notes,” said Kelley Carter, an entertainment writer for the Chicago Tribune, who covered the service.
“The Kings of Comedy, they were emoting; they were very physically distraught,” Carter told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “They broke down during their tributes, but they had people in stitches.”
Cedric the Entertainer looked at the huge crowd that turned out for the service and cracked that even in death that Mac was “still the hottest ticket in town.”
Mac's stage attire each night on the Kings of Comedy tour was so bold, Hughley said, that “Bernie would wear colors that crayons hadn't even thought of yet.”
Nearly 7,000 Friends and Fans Memorialize Bernie Mac....
No comments:
Post a Comment