Eugene Lee Dies: Longtime ‘SNL’ Production Designer, Tony-Winning Broadway Scenic Designer Was 83

Eugene Lee, the Emmy-winning production designer for Saturday Night Live since 1975 and a multiple Tony Award-winner for such Broadway hits as Wicked, Sweeney Todd and Candide, died yesterday in Providence, Rhode Island. He was 83.

Additional information was not immediately available.

As this production designer of SNL since the year of its debut, Lee was the longest-serving members of the NBC show’s production staff. He also served as production designer for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon from 2014-2018 and numerous SNL specials.

Among the numerous Broadway production for which Lee were Sweeney Todd in 1979, Gilda Radner – Live From New York (1979), Merrily We Roll Along (1981), Seussical (2001), Wicked (2003), A Streetcar Named Desire (2012), Glengarry Glen Ross (2012), and, most recently, Amazing Grace (2015).

Lee was also instrumental in founding Trinity Rep in Providence, and remained its resident set designer until his death. The theater company’s founding artistic director and Lee’s longtime friend Adrian Hall died last weekend at age 95.

MORE TO COME…