Biography

His life and death were the inspiration for one of the episodes of The X-Files (1993). Peter Boyle played a fictional character named Clyde Bruckman in a Darin Morgan-penned episode called "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose".

His life could serve as a lesson on the evils of alcohol. In his prime in the 1920s he was arguably one of the best writers/gag men/directors in the business. His keen sense of comedy allowed him to easily shift between diverse assignments for Buster Keaton (co-directing The General (1926)), Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy and Harold Lloyd without missing a beat. However, by the early 1930s his chronic alcoholism made him unreliable. He'd go on benders during production and fail to show up on sets. Lloyd attempted to keep him in the business during the 1930s, graciously giving him directorial credit on Feet First (1930) and Movie Crazy (1932) despite his questionable input into these productions. His behavior finally made him all but unemployable in Hollywood and, ironically, in his last paying studio job he contributed gags to a Joan Davis comedy, She Gets Her Man (1945), for Universal Pictures that resulted in Lloyd successfully suing him for plagiarizing his property. In desperation, it turned out, Bruckman had lifted material from "Movie Crazy". The lawsuit resulted in Bruckman being blackballed. He managed scant intermittent work in live TV in Los Angeles with Keaton, but he grew increasingly despondent and destitute. He committed suicide in 1955 in a phone booth on Santa Monica Boulevard with a handgun he'd borrowed from Keaton.

He had been a sportswriter prior to entering the film business.

He directed 4 Laurel and Hardy films and helped to develop them as a team.

Is portrayed by Gunther Berghofer in The Three Stooges (2000)