Star’s widow claims contact from beyond grave. The wife of comedy star Bernie Mac says his spirit visits her since his death due to complications from pneumonia. World Entertainment News Network quotes Rhonda McCullough saying she doesn’t “always feel” her late husband’s presence. “But I think he comes when I really need him,” she adds. Mac died in August at barely 50 years old, shocking the entertainment world. “I could smell his cologne,” McCullough says of the first encounter. “I inhaled and I said, ‘You’re here.’ I was turning around and saying, ‘Hey, Bernard.’ It stayed with me for about five minutes.”

Samuel L. Jackson, Bernie Mac film is subject of dispute.

Producers of a comedy starring late entertainer Bernie Mac with Samuel L. Jackson deny that the film is based on a soul singer’s life. Sam Moore, of the Sam and Dave R&B duo, has threatened legal action if he’s not compensated by the creators of Soul Men, according to the New York Daily News. “In the movie, they have a reunion concert,” Moore, 72, tells the paper. “Dave and I had a reunion in 1982 after not talking with each other for years.” Moore admits that he hasn’t seen Soul Men, but says he was even offered $1,000 to make a cameo appearance, which he turned down. Producer David Friendly counters: “Everything in the movie is completely made up. The characters are back-up singers, unlike Sam and Dave, who were headliners…Just because they sing one Sam and Dave song doesn’t make it a movie about them.” Soul Men hits theaters on Oct. 24.

Comedian Bernie Mac died at Northwestern Memorial hospital in Chicago early this morning, reports the Chicago Sun TImes. The funny standup comedian and star of televison’s popular Bernie Mac show was 50.

Mary Ann Grossett, Mac’s sister-in-law spoke with People Magazine, sharing details of her famous inlaw’s final struggle:

He couldn’t breathe. He opened his eyes on his own and looked at Rhonda (his wife). She called his name, and he opened his eyes and nodded to her. She smiled at him and told him, ‘Don’t leave me … ‘I’m waiting for you to come back.’ He shrugged his shoulders, and she said that’s when she knew he was tired. He signaled to her that his body was tired….

[The doctors] were working on him. They tried to resuscitate him two times. One time he came back for about an hour. Then he went into cardiac arrest the second time.

His cause of death has not been officially reported but Mac has been hospitalized with Pneumonia for about a week, as reported by BET.com last week.

Stella Foster, the Chicago Sun Times reporter who broke the story says “It brought tears to my eyes because Bernie Mac has always been my all-time favorite entertainer and comedian. It pains me to have to report that,” Foster said during a phone interview on Saturday morning.

Entertainment mogul Russell Simmons has a rack of Bernie Mac stories but one particularly funny one stands out. “When he saw the lead-in comedian get booed off stage in his first nationally televised appearance on Def Comedy Jam,” Simmons told BET.com, “he coined one his most, if not his single most loved lines. He said “I aint scared of you mother*******”. And at least for part of his career that became his calling card. I just remembered that and it made me laugh”

Remembering a King of Comedy: See photos and get a timeline of Bernie Mac’s life.