Clyde Bruckman
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| Clyde Bruckman | |
|---|---|
| Born | Clyde A. Bruckman September 20, 1894 San Jose, California  |
| Died | January 4, 1955 (aged 60) Hollywood, California |
Clyde A. Bruckman (September 20, 1894 – January 4, 1955), was an American writer and director of comedy films during the late silent era as well as the early sound era of cinema. Bruckman collaborated with such legendary comedians as Buster Keaton, W.C. Fields, Laurel and Hardy, The Three Stooges, Abbott and Costello and Harold Lloyd.
Bruckman (pronounced "BROOK-man") may be best known for his collaborations with Buster Keaton, as Bruckman co-wrote several of Keaton's most popular films, including Our Hospitality (1923), Sherlock Jr. (1924), The Navigator (1924), Seven Chances (1925), The Cameraman (1928) and The General (1927), which Bruckman also co-directed.
Clyde Bruckman continued directing comedies during the sound era, his most famous credit being The Fatal Glass of Beer, W. C. Fields's esoteric satire of Yukon melodramas. Unfortunately for his career path, Bruckman's fondness for alcohol caused production delays that cost him directorial assignments. From 1935 forward, Bruckman would be limited to writing scripts.
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[edit] Recycling gags
Bruckman's wealth of silent-comedy experience earned him a steady position in Columbia Pictures' short-subject department. (Bruckman was instrumental in Columbia's hiring his old boss Buster Keaton in 1939.) Bruckman continued to write new material for The Three Stooges and other comics, but as time went by he resorted to borrowing gags from Harold Lloyd's and Buster Keaton's silents. When Bruckman lifted the magician's-coat sequence from Lloyd's Movie Crazy to be used in the Three Stooges' Loco Boy Makes Good (1942), Lloyd sued Columbia and won.
Bruckman was hired by Universal Pictures to write comedy scenes for the studio's B musical features. This was a lucrative assignment that paid better than short subjects. He continued recycling gags but on a larger scale, now lifting entire sequences from older films. In 1945 Bruckman again turned to the magician's-coat routine, this time for Noah Beery, Jr. in the "B" musical-comedy feature Her Lucky Night. Again Lloyd filed suit, and again he collected damages. Bruckman was fired, and never worked on a feature film again.
Demoralized, Bruckman returned to Columbia, where his work was now so slipshod that he would simply hand in an old script, without any attempt at updating or revising it.
[edit] The 1950s
The advent of television, and its constant need for broadcast material, gave Bruckman a new start. Abbott and Costello launched a filmed television series in 1951. Having used up most of their own familiar routines during the show's first season, the comedians hired Clyde Bruckman, and his mental storehouse of gags saw them through a second season. Although Bruckman received credit for several scripts, these turned out to contain reworkings of old Keaton and Lloyd gags. Again, Lloyd filed suit, naming Abbott & Costello's production company as a party to the suit. As a result, other producers were unwilling to hire Bruckman.
Bruckman's only safe haven was Columbia, but producer Jules White had already filled his quota of scripts for that season, and had no immediate need for Bruckman's services.
With nowhere else to turn, the desolate Bruckman borrowed a pistol from Buster Keaton, and took his own life in Hollywood, California. Some reports claim he ended his life in the bathroom of a cafe on Santa Monica Boulevard after failing to pay for a meal, while others claim he was in a nearby phone booth. According to the phone-booth version, he left a note stating that he did not want to make a mess at home.
[edit] Cultural references
The X-Files Season 3 episode "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" features a character, played by Peter Boyle, who foresees how other people die. Two detective characters on that episode are named Havez and Cline, after Jean Havez and Eddie Cline, two other writers who also worked with Buster Keaton.
