Stoughton J. "Bruz" Fletcher III (March 12, 1906 – February 8, 1941) was a gay musician 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. He ended his own life at age 34.Ponder, Jon. "1935: Bruz Fletcher’s Camp Style at Club Bali". West Hollywood History.Bruz Fletcher biography. TylerAlpern.com.
Fletcher by 1929 had become a songwriter; for 1929 and 1930 he toured the United States as an accompanying pianist and songwriter for a vaudeville performance headlined by Esther Ralston. In 1932, Fletcher wrote multiple novels and plays. Fletcher then began performing in clubs and cafes: in New York in 1934, in Palm Beach, Florida from January 1935, and in Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles from August 1935. He made many singing performances at the Bali nightclub in Sunset Boulevard from 1936 to 1940, entertaining numerous celebrities. However, he expressed that his true passion was songwriting, and that he would prefer to earn money being a playwright or a novelist than a singer. In 1938, his Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles home and belongings were destroyed in a fire. In 1939, he was found guilty of drunk driving after injuring two others in a vehicular accident, and banned from drinking alcohol for three years. In 1941, he died by suicide, possibly due to failing to find employment.
Family upbringing
Fletcher was born into a wealthy Indiana banking family that owned what came to be consolidated as the Fletcher American National Bank,American Fletcher National Bank history. Encyclopedia of Indianapolis. one of the most successful commercial banks in the state."He Played and Sang for Nightclubbers; Now Secret is Told". Fletcher obituary. Berkeley Daily Gazette. February 11, 1941. Fletcher's grandfather, Stoughton Fletcher I, owned the Delco-Remy Company, which had pioneered automobile self-starters. His grandfather's many successful commercial interests, which also included two Indianapolis banks and a large engine works, had allowed him to build a $2,000,000 home."Scion Continues Fletcher Curse," Greensburg Daily News (Greensburg, Indiana), February 11, 1941, quoted at Findagrave.com. However, Fletcher's ambitious father, Stoughton Fletcher II, squandered the multi-generational family fortune on unsuccessful investments and lost the family estate. After the Wall Street crash of 1929, the family's financial interests were wiped out. The father was reduced to working as an elevator operator."Trail of Tragedy," Bruz Fletcher obit, The Free Lance-Star, Fredericksburg, VA, February 14, 1941. "Left alive, Stoughton's father, once one of the richest men in the west and now an elevator operator."
Fletcher grew up in Laurel Hall, a mansion in northeast Indianapolis.Ari Shapiro's Och & Oy! / Indiana's LGBTQ+ music pioneer Bruz Fletcher, WFYI (Indiana Public Radio), January 31, 2024. The Fletcher family had become notorious for unconventional behavior, high society escapades and premature deaths. They owned a private yacht with which they traveled the world.Alpern, Tyler, Camped, Tramped, and a Riotous Vamp, Fletcher biography, Blurb Press, 2009 The novelist Booth Tarkington, who was briefly married to Fletcher's aunt, Laurel Louisa Fletcher,"1919 Pulitzer Prize Review: The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington, Greatbooksguy.com, November 21, 2018 reportedly used the troubled Fletcher family as the inspiration for his 1918 novel The Magnificent Ambersons.In 1942 the novel was adapted to film by Orson Welles.
Fletcher's nickname was a diminutive of "brother". He attended several prestigious boarding schools, including the Brooks School for Boys (now Park Tudor School) 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, his grandmother, distraught over her daughter's death, took her own life in the same way.
Career
In 1926 Fletcher moved to Hollywood. For a few years he eked out a living by 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. Fletcher and 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.Bruz Fletcher biography. TylerAlpern.com. "Fletcher and his partner Casey Roberts lived together openly in home after home, in state after state, hosting salons and publicly collaborated on numerous artistic endeavors ranging from the theatrical, to literary, to the decorative and fine arts. The two kept no secrets about living together over the years. Their domestic arrangements were written about often in newspapers and magazines as were their many artistic collaborations."
By 1929, Fletcher had written songs for actresses Leatrice Joy and Ruth Roland to perform, while author A. M. Williamson said that Fletcher had written a musical score for her book Bill the Sheik. In 1929 and 1930, he performed as a pianist in vaudeville with actress Esther Ralston, who sang songs he had crafted for her. They travelled around performing at theatres owned by RKO. They performed at the Orpheum in Los Angeles, at the Keith-Albee Theatre in Boston, at Proctor's Theatre in Yonkers, New York, at the Hennepin-Orpheum at Minneapolis, at the New Orpheum Theatre in Sioux City, Iowa, at the Orpheum in Omaha, Nebraska, at the RKO Mainstreet in Kansas City, Missouri, at the Earle Theater in Washington D.C., at the Fisher Theatre in Detroit, at Shea's Buffalo in Buffalo, New York, as well as other venues in Brooklyn, in Rochester, New York, in Mount Vernon, New York, in Paterson, New Jersey, in Cincinnati, in St Louis, in South Bend, Indiana, and in Philadelphia.
Fletcher's first novel Beginning with Laughter (being sold at $2) was published in January 1932. The plot was about an orphan, who would become a nightclub hostess in debauchery-laden New York, as well as her lover, a songwriter, and their patron, a rich owner of nightclubs. By May 1932, another novel of Fletcher's, entitled Only the Rich, was published (also being sold at $2), regarding an heiress who flees an arranged marriage and finds new romance. By August 1932, he was said to have written a Broadway play, Aggie's Affairs. As a chronicler of the demimonde, during his career, Bruz spiced his literary 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.
Fletcher in December 1932 was writing sketches for Queenie Smith to perform in New York. The play Not a Saint, written by Fletcher and John Montague, starring Queenie Smith and George Walcott, was performed from June 1933, about a salacious actress who ultimately fails to woo a man and dies from a drug overdose; Fletcher and Montague had to deny allegations that the play was based on the life of Jeanne Eagels. In February 1934, Fletcher began performing at the Casino Town Club in New York together with Smith, with Fletcher singing while playing the piano.
Fletcher and Casey Roberts in March 1934, held an exhibition in New York for their photographs, including those of Serge Obolensky, the wife of Vincent Astor, and Casey's cook. In December 1934, Fletcher and Roberts travelled to Palm Beach, Florida, after having released another novel, October Again, and crafted the lyrics of the Frimi musical and comedic performance for Christmas in New York. In January 1935, Fletcher started a daily singing routine during cocktail hour in the Sidewalk Cafe at The Patio in Palm Peach. In February 1935, Fletcher contributed the lyrical composition of a musical number for the Bal de Tete dance event in Palm Beach's Everglades Club. During these months, he was noted to have mixed around with Maurice Fatio and Hugh Dillman. In March 1935, Fletcher and Casey Roberts exhibited more of their art in Palm Beach, including Fletcher's watercolor drawings and photos.
Fletcher returned to New York in April 1935, to edit his play, Velvet Lined, after it was bought for performance at Broadway. In July 1935, Fletcher was made by Ted Healy to perform in front of Joan Crawford and other cast and crew in the midst of a film production in Hollywood, Los Angeles. Later that year, Fletcher performed at Sunset Boulevard, first at the Three Stars nightclub by August, where he was once arrested for being complicit in selling alcohol after permitted hours (which he denied), and then at Cafe LaMaze. During that time, Fletcher's performance of "I Live in the House Where Garbo Used to Live", regarding Greta Garbo, was noted to have offended a producer working at Garbo's studio despite the song's innocuous lyrics, such that the cafe he was performing at forbade Fletcher from performing that song there henceforth.
Fletcher had moved to Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles by 1936; he counted among his friends Queenie Smith, Ted Healy, Nancy Carroll, Jane Darwell, Grace Hayes, Maude Eburne and Helen Ainsworth. In June 1936, his comedic play Commuting Distance was shown in the Beechwood Theatre of Scarborough-on-Hudson in New York. By the next year, Fletcher had developed the hobby of growing herbs, including catnip for his pet cats, with local media reported that he may have "the only complete herb garden on the Pacific Coast".
In the late 1930s, Fletcher became renowned as a nightclub entertainer, during what came to be known as "The Pansy Craze"."The Pansy Craze: The Story and the Music". Queer Music Heritage. He performed in glamorous venues, delighting his sophisticated patrons with witty and risqué songs punctuated with salacious patter, clearly influenced by Noël Coward and Cole Porter. Fletcher wrote at least six plays, many for summer stock, including The Greater Thing (1930). Fletcher was known as "The Singing Satirist". His four-year-plus run in Club Bali in the second half of the 1930s, underscored a bawdy, party-like atmosphere for the city's most outrageous celebrities and notables.Bruz Fletcher. Queer Music Heritage. "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."Hamel, Jenny (May 11, 2018). "The Pansy Craze: When gay nightlife in Los Angeles really kicked off". Santa Monica, Calif.: KCRW. "Hollywood’s artistic crowd would fill the Bali night after night," During his run at the Bali, Fletcher's name received about two hundred 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."Brackett, Charles, It's the Pictures That Got Small: Charles Brackett on Billy Wilder and Hollywood's Golden Age, ed. by Anthony Slide, Columbia University Press, 2015