An ‘SNL’ Legacy Lives On With the Memory of Production Designer Eugene Lee

NBC’s Emmy juggernaut Saturday Night Live entered a pair of episodes for the production design award this season, one hosted by Only Murders in the Building‘s Steve Martin and Martin Short and one hosted by Wednesday star Jenna Ortega.

A nomination, or nominations, would extend the remarkable track record of Eugene Lee, who died in February at age 83 after serving as a production designer on SNL since its 1975 pilot. He has been nominated 17 times for the show, and a posthumous award would give him a seventh Emmy win for the sketch series.

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“I was very honored to work with Eugene Lee for 47 years,” says fellow production designer Leo Yoshimura. “Eugene hired me to be his art director on Saturday Night Live in August 1975. I overstayed. I will miss his consummate passion for design. But it is comforting to know that I will still be able to work in Eugene Lee’s television studio. Studio 8H is his room; he created this studio. He made every Saturday Night Live an event.”

Yoshimura and production designer Keith Raywood count “The Holiday Train” sketch’s set from Martin and Short’s episode among their favorites from this 48th season, which was cut short because of the writers strike. The sketch, co-starring Kenan Thompson and Cecily Strong, begins on a train to Buffalo, with a variety-show type look inspired by the classic 1954 musical White Christmas, starring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye.

“I like the way it theatrically split apart during the scene to reveal a snow-covered landscape and then went back together again for the ending, all moved manually by our 8H staging crew, the best in the business,” says Raywood.

Yoshimura describes that train split as “pure luck, since we rehearsed this complicated movement only twice, once at run-through and once at dress rehearsal with an audience. I guess that’s how confident, how good and how foolish we really are.”

This story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

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