Simonson, Lee

(1888-1967)

   Born in New York, Lee Simonson, along with Robert Edmond Jones, Norman Bel Geddes, and Jo Mielziner, became one of the leading Broadway scene designers of the years between the two world wars. Simonson attended Harvard University, where he studied with George Pierce Baker, and his first designs were done for the Washington Square Players. Following military service in World War I, Simonson returned to become a founding member of the Theatre Guild, designing settings for Jane Clegg (1920), Liliom (1921), He Who Gets Slapped (1922), R.U.R. (1922), From Morn to Midnight (1922), Peer Gynt (1923), The Adding Machine (1923), Man and the Masses (1924), The Road to Rome (1927), Faust (1928), Marco Millions (1928), and Dynamo (1929). After 1930, Simonson continued to design, but at a slower pace. In this period, he designed Elizabeth the Queen* (1930) and the Pulitzer PRizE-winning Idiot's Delight* (1936). Simonson's design style owes much to the European modernist innovations known in America as the New Stagecraft and he wrote two important books on his design ideas, The Stage Is Set (1932) and The Art of Scenic Design (1950), as well as an autobiography, Part of a Lifetime (1943).