Bruckman collaborated with such comedians as Buster Keaton, Monty Banks, W. C. Fields, Laurel and Hardy, The Three Stooges, Abbott and Costello, and Harold Lloyd.

Hollywood chronicler Kenneth Anger considers Bruckman to have been one of the key figures in the history of American screen comedy.

Bruckman directed four Laurel and Hardy comedies in the early stages of their established partnership at the Hal Roach Studios in 1927–1928, most notably The Battle of the Century with its celebrated custard pie fight.

Bruckman continued directing comedies during the sound era, his most famous credit being The Fatal Glass of Beer, W. C. Fields' esoteric satire of Yukon melodramas.

Bruckman continued to write new material for The Three Stooges and other comics, but as time went by, he resorted to borrowing gags from Lloyd's and Keaton's silent films.

One example of Bruckman's constant recycling is a routine involving the comedian thinking he is boxed-in while trying to leave a parallel parking space.

The routine was used at least four times by Bruckman: with Lloyd Hamilton in Too Many Highballs (1933); W. C. Fields in Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935); Buster Keaton in Nothing But Pleasure (1940); and an episode of The Abbott and Costello Show called Car Trouble (1954).

[8] On the afternoon of January 4, 1955, Bruckman, a resident of Santa Monica, California, parked his car outside a local restaurant, entered a restroom, and shot himself in the head.

[9] He left a typed note requesting that his wife be notified and his body be donated for medical or experimental purposes, stating that "I have no money to pay for a funeral.

The X-Files Season 3 episode "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" features a character, played by Peter Boyle, who foresees how other people die.