Comedian and Chicago native Bernie Mac died early Saturday morning from complications due to pneumonia, his publicist confirmed.

Mac, 50, had been hospitalized for about a week at Northwestern Hospital, according to his spokeswoman. A few years ago, Mac disclosed that he suffered from sarcoidosis, a rare autoimmune disease that causes inflammation in tissue, most often in the lungs.

The comic born Bernard Jeffrey McCullough could cut an imposing figure. He stood 6-foot-3, was built like a fullback and carried himself with a bouncer's reticence. But perhaps the strongest weapon in the Chicago comedian's arsenal was that voice, that amalgam of thought and a delivery that could rise like a tidal wave, outpace a Gatling gun and remained, to his last days, loud and unapologetic.

He wasn't scared, he told us time and again, to tell anyone what he thought, to say what others were afraid to say. That fearlessness wasn't always welcome, considering Mac didn't get his big break until his 30s. But when he did, the comic skyrocketed to success in stand-up, television and the big screen.

The iconoclast, who died Sunday from heart failure at 71, was practically a one-man history of American comedy - from the rise of '60s counterculture through the war on terrorism. For more than 40 years, this harsh critic of our shared foibles was determined to set us straight every step of the way. In nightclubs and eventually cable television, he did so in a pointed, profane style that challenged our standards for what could be said on the public airwaves.

It seems quaint in the more coarse pop culture of today, but Carlin's "Seven Dirty Words You Can Never Say on Television" routine led to a 1978 Supreme Court ruling that established the U.S. government's authority to regulate "indecent" language in broadcast shows - but made him an enduring symbol of First Amendment speech rights.

"Prior to George, all comedians wore ties and wanted to play Vegas," Jay Leno, host of The Tonight Show, said in an interview Monday. Carlin made 130 appearances on the show, beginning in 1961. His appearances reflected his shift from his clean-cut, suit-and-coat days to his grungy beard-and-ponytail era.

"I loved that he hated golf," Leno adds. "He'd say that these hundreds of acres were wasted just so that two guys could hit a ball. I think he was as riled up on the day he died as he was in the '60s when I first saw him."