Edward Stephenson

EDWARD STEPHENSON

Edward Stephenson, a Primetime Emmy-winning production designer whose television credits spanned five decades and included classic variety shows as well as scripted series, died February 28, 2011.

Born Edward Sheffield Stephenson in Iowa, his family moved to California when he was a child, settling in Glendale. He was a graduate of the renowned Pasadena Playhouse College of the Theatre.

From the late 1930s through the early 1940s Stephenson worked as a director, art director and producer for various playhouses and theaters throughout the United States.

Following service in the US Air Force during World War II, he accepted an appointment to General Douglas MacArthur's special staff section as the civilian Director of Entertainment and Music for the Commander in Chief, Far East and Supreme Commander, Allied Powers. Six years later, at the conclusion of the Korean War, Stephenson returned to Washington, D.C. and New York City to compose the Standard manual of Operating Procedures for world-wide U.S.O. and Department of Army Entertainment and Music programs.

After leaving the military he returned to the theater and also found work in feature films and the expanding medium of television. Upon showing his portfolio to the Art Department at NBC Television at Sunset & Vine in Hollywood, he was hired on the spot and began what would become a long and illustrious career designing for what was then known as "the small screen". His work as a staff designer at NBC spanned the early years of live television and into the dawning of the age of color TV.

Edward was awarded the first of his three Emmys for designing the landmark TV special, An Evening with Fred Astaire (1958), one of the first television productions to be shot and broadcast using color video tape. Other notable musical-variety series designed by Stephenson include The Danny Kaye Show (CBS 1963) and The Andy Williams Show (1959), on which he was both Producer and Art Director, credited with creating the show's unique style and winning a second Emmy for design.

A long association with the team of Bud Yorkin and Norman Lear saw Stephenson working as Production Designer on Divorce, American Style (1967), and as Associate Producer on the features, Start the Revolution Without Me (1970), and Cold Turkey (1971). Also at Yorkin & Lear's Tandem Productions, he produced the first (unsold) pilot of All in the Family (in 1968 for ABC), and designed the series Maude (1972), Sanford & Son (1972) and Good Times (1974).

His long collaboration with Paul Witt, Tony Thomas and Susan Harris began with Soap (1977), which won Stephenson his third Primetime Emmy for Production Design. Other long-running Witt-Thomas/Witt-Thomas-Harris successes include Benson (1979), It's A Living (1980), The Golden Girls (1985), for which he received an Emmy nomination, Empty Nest (1988) and many more.

As a businessman, Stephenson developed a successful chain of retail clothing stores, pioneering imprinted casual sportswear beginning in 1972 with one Super Shirts store on Hollywood Boulevard, eventually expanding to twelve outlets in California plus national mail-order sales. Several years later, his desire to increase the quality of the decoration of his sets for television and film led him to create the Hollywood Studio Gallery, an extensive collection located in the former Technicolor laboratories which has, over more than three decades, become the foremost source of original and reproduced art used in motion picture and television production.

Survivors include his daughter, Tara Stephenson, who has worked as a set decorator on such series as 3rd Rock from the Sun, That '70s Show and Greek, and her mother, Maria Stephenson.