Bruz Fletcher

Stoughton J. "Bruz" Fletcher III (March 12, 1906–February 8, 1941) was a gay musician, singer, composer, and literary figure who came to prominence in Los Angeles during the 1930s. He played piano, and wrote, sang and recorded risqué songs about sex, gay culture, prostitutes, adulterers, intersex people, alcoholics, hedonists, outsiders, predators, and grifters. Fletcher was a colorful, eccentric character and an artistic polymath whose life ended tragically at a relatively young age.

Family upbringing

Fletcher grew up in a privileged family setting of sprawling estates, mansions, yachts, race horses, high finance, lavish parties, and opulence. For generations his family had established themselves in the Indiana banking industry, eventually owning what came to be consolidated as the Fletcher American National Bank, one of the most successful commercial banks in the state. The family became notorious for dissolute habits, tragic (premature) deaths, unconventional behavior, and high society escapades. They traveled the world on their own private yacht.

Bruz's Aunt Louisa had, from 1902 to 1911, been married to novelist/playwright Booth Tarkington, who reportedly used the troubled Fletcher family as the inspiration for his 1918 novel The Magnificent Ambersons, which was set in a fictionalized version of Indianapolis.

Bruz's nickname was a diminutive of "brother". He attended several prestigious boarding schools, including the Brooks School for Boys and the Hill School, as well as the Howe Military Academy. He also attended the University of Virginia. In 1921, his mother killed herself by drinking prussic acid; about an hour later, Bruz's grandmother, distraught over her daughter's death, took her own life in an identical manner.

Bruz's ambitious father, Stoughton Fletcher II, squandered the multi-generational family fortune on bad investments and lost the family estate. After the Wall Street crash of 1929, the family's prestigious financial interests were wiped out. The father was reduced to working as an elevator operator.

Career as an entertainer

In 1926 Fletcher moved to Hollywood. For a few years he eked out a living composing songs for early Talkies, including "Dream Girl" and "Cocaine". Around this time he became involved and began living with his long-term life partner, Casey Roberts.

In the 1930s, Fletcher became renowned as a nightclub entertainer, during what came to be known in the 1920s and 1930s as "The Pansy Craze". He performed in glamorous venues, delighting his sophisticated patrons with witty and risqué songs punctuated with salacious patter, clearly influenced by Noel Coward and Cole Porter. He also toured, and wrote for and accompanied other acts, including a revue for actress/comedienne Esther Ralston in 1930. Fletcher wrote at least six plays, many for summer stock, including Aggie's Affairs (1932), Not a Saint (1933), and Commuting Distance (1936).

His five-year run at L.A.'s Club Bali, which began in 1935, underscored a bawdy, party-like atmosphere for the city's most outrageous celebrities and notables. "It was on the Sunset Strip that a tiki lounge called Club Bali opened its doors," wrote historian Jenny Hamel. "Waiters wearing sarongs would serve drinks and 'curried dishes' to all the patrons sitting on red couches. And the headlining act for five years was an openly gay, high society piano and song man by the name of Bruz Fletcher."

"Hollywood’s artistic crowd would fill the Bali night after night," with patrons including such movie stars as Humphrey Bogart and Louise Brooks. During his five-year run at the Bali, Fletcher's name received about 200 mentions in the Los Angeles Times. Some show business legends who caught Fletcher's act were dismissive. "After a movie tonight I stopped at Bali to have a look at Bruz Fletcher, a cousin of Elizabeth's, the son of the rich, rich cousin (Stoughton Fletcher) who ruled Indianapolis," wrote producer/screenwriter Charles Brackett. "This poor little guy ... survives by singing songs at the tawdriest of pansy night clubs. He's a wisp of a creature, too touching to think about."

Fletcher and his partner, the noted decorator and set designer Casey Roberts (a three-time Academy Award nominee), lived together as an openly gay couple for years, often hosting salons. They collaborated on artistic endeavors, including theatrical productions, literary endeavors, and various fine art projects. In 1938, a fire destroyed their Hollywood home.

Fletcher recorded more than two dozen songs on 78 rpm records, many issued by Liberty Music Shop Records. His songs, laced with double-entendres and social satire, included "The Hellish Mrs. Haskell", "Nympho-Dipso-Ego Maniac", "Get It Up, Kitty", and "Lei from Hawaii". His best-known song, "Drunk With Love", was recorded in 1946 by Frances Faye, who re-recorded it three more times during the 1950s. "It ['Drunk with Love'] was the number one song that you would hear in gay, especially lesbian bars of the 1940s and '50s," said Fletcher biographer Tyler Alpern. "You can’t look at any literature or interviews or oral histories from that time without somebody mentioning 'Drunk with Love'."

He also wrote theatrical works and short stories, and published two novels, Beginning with Laughter and Only the Rich. As a chronicler of the demimonde, Bruz spiced these works with details that provided candid glimpses into a world populated by society dowagers, misfits, celebs, addicts, servants, lovers, and eccentrics who reflected a wide variety of sexual orientations and behavior.

"Some of Fletcher's songs sound tailored to carry one set of meanings to heterosexuals and another to gay men, much like Cole Porter's," wrote historian Stuart Timmons. "The fact that Fletcher employed a speedy and sometimes blunt wit strikingly similar to that of Rae Bourbon is telling. Noel and Cole, for all their outrageousness, were careful not to cross certain lines or close certain doors. Bruz Fletcher was clearly more daring—more confident, more careless, or a volatile mix of both."

Death

Fletcher was reported to be performing in New York at the Breevort Club in October 1940. He mysteriously disappeared at the end of the year, returning to Hollywood the following January. However, he was dismayed to find the Club Bali closed. Frequent police crackdowns on gay performers and cabarets prevented Fletcher and other artists from working their trades professionally.

Fletcher grew increasingly despondent, and like his mother, grandmother, and another Fletcher ancestor, committed suicide. Fletcher asphyxiated himself in a running car parked in the garage of his friend John Snowden in Tarzana, California, on February 8, 1941. He was 34. His suicide was reported in a page 1 story in the Los Angeles Times on February 11, 1941.