Franne Lee, who designed costumes for ‘SNL’ and ‘Sweeney Todd,’ dies at 81
Franne Lee on the New York Public Library’s Hal Prince exhibition in 2019. Lee designed the costumes for Prince’s Sweeney Todd and Candide. Doug Reside/New York Public Library cover caption
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Doug Reside/New York Public Library
Franne Lee on the New York Public Library’s Hal Prince exhibition in 2019. Lee designed the costumes for Prince’s Sweeney Todd and Candide.
Doug Reside/New York Public Library
Franne Lee as soon as mentioned she had, “no concern of designing with out cash.” She mentioned it makes you, “extra artistic.”
As a fancy dress designer through the early years of Saturday Evening Stay, Lee needed to get “artistic” on a weekly foundation.
The Tony Award profitable designer died final week in Florida at age 81.
With a small price range and frequent journeys to Goodwill, Franne Lee helped create a few of SNL‘s most iconic characters, together with the Coneheads, the Killer Bees and Roseanne Roseannadanna.
“Doing units and wardrobe for a present like SNL is a gauntlet,” former SNL forged member Laraine Newman tells NPR in an e mail, “However Franne gave our present a rugged class. She was a real artist.”
Final yr, in an interview with the podcast Ian Talks Comedy, Lee informed Ian Fermaglich, she favored the camaraderie on the present — she was particularly keen on working with Newman and Gilda Radner. The fabric itself was one other matter.
“I did not like plenty of the writing to be trustworthy with you,” she laughed, “I believed a few of it was good however I believed it was very sophomoric.”
All through her profession, Lee collaborated intently with set designer Eugene Lee, who was additionally her life companion. They each gained Tony Awards for his or her work on the Broadway musical Candide. Later, they scored the celebrated prizes once more with their designs for Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Road.
Len Cariou, (left), Victor Garber and Angela Lansbury in Sweeney Todd. Martha Swope/New York Public Library cover caption
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Martha Swope/New York Public Library
To create costumes for the darkly humorous Sweeney Todd, Lee discovered concepts in classic cartoon pictures from the satirical British journal, Punch, says Doug Reside, curator of the Billy Rose Theatre Division on the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts the place Lee’s papers from the Seventies-Nineties are held.
Lewis J. Stadlen and Sam Freed within the Broadway revival of the musical Candide. Martha Swope/New York Public Library cover caption
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Martha Swope/New York Public Library
“I feel that is type of truly consultant of Franne’s work,” he says, “that she tends to take one thing that is kind of foolish and comedian and convey a type of seriousness to it.”
Later in life, Lee spent time portray, and began an artists’ co-op. Her daughter Stacy Sandler tells NPR that her mother liked creating costumes out of “discovered items…rags and different issues.” She says even when Franne Lee had “greater budgets to play with, she was at all times in search of the deal.”
