Clyde Adolph Bruckman was a gagman, writer, and director of some of the greatest films of the Golden Age of comedy. While better known than many screenwriters working in the early comedy films, he is not nearly so famous as the many classic comedies to which he lent his talents, including one of the most famous and revered of all silent films, The General (1927). He worked with Mack Sennett, Hal Roach, Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, W. C. Fields, Harry Langdon, and Harold Lloyd, as well as with such lesser lights as Monty Banks, Abbott and Costello, the Three Stooges, and Robert Woolsey. He has one of the most impressive records in the annals of a very productive period.

Bruckman was born in San Bernardino, California. He completed high school, which gave him the academic edge over most of his colleagues, and after a few years as a...