The Stiegelbauer workshop, where Stephen DeMaria coordinated the construction of sets for “Saturday Night Live,” is in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, miles from 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Geographically, and in the minds of “S.N.L.” fans, DeMaria’s name was always far removed from the prestige and glamour of the show that has defined American comedy since 1975. But while most viewers have never heard of him, he has spent 50 years setting the scenes for the show’s most memorable moments.
And now he is done. DeMaria, known as “Demo” in the shop, retired after the 50th season finale, May 17. The day before, the white-haired, 87-year-old carpenter was leaning over his drafting table, inspecting blueprints and fiddling with the No. 2 pencil usually found behind his ear. For DeMaria and his crew, the show had already begun.
Stiegelbauer Associates Inc. is a cross between a shop class and a late-night museum: A Rainbow Room marquee hangs above a workbench; a leftover airplane set sits plastic-wrapped; photos of past sets installed in the show’s Studio 8H are framed on every wall.
During show weeks, sets are assembled all over the shop by an eclectic crew of craftspeople, many of whom have worked on “S.N.L.” for decades. As the foreman, DeMaria coordinates the teams assigned to build the sets designed at 30 Rock. Then he oversees the construction, moseying through the shop and kicking up sawdust with his cane as he checks in at the workstations.
The cane was the result of an injury he suffered at an end-of-season celebration last year: After a night of tearing up the dance floor, he fell off a curb and broke his hip.
“The best time of my life is the ‘S.N.L.’ parties,” he said. “I’ll be on the dance floor when I get there, and I won’t leave until 5 in the morning.” His favorite, he said, was the 2012 end-of-season party, after an episode hosted by Mick Jagger. “He was dancing all over the studio, so I got involved,” DeMaria recalled. “I was dancing with Mick Jagger!”
Nicole Stiegelbauer, the shop’s operations director and the third generation of Stiegelbauers to work with DeMaria, said, “The fact that he’s up and walking after his hip injury is a true testament that he is just too ornery to keep down.”
Stiegelbauer added, “There’s no one wired like him anymore.”
DeMaria’s energy was apparent during an earlier visit to the workshop in October, as the crew raced to build sets for an episode hosted by Ariana Grande — they included a wedding reception backdrop for that week’s Domingo sketch, the viral hit of the season.
The workshop action was a production all its own, a kind of choreographed chaos as painters and carpenters moved quickly but efficiently across the concrete floor, with roughly 36 hours left before air time. DeMaria monitored the progress and kept the mood light, shouting out crew members in his honking Brooklyn accent: “How you doing? It’s all going good? All right.” He chuckled as the workers nodded back at him, managing to make even the busiest of them crack a smile.
When the crew broke for lunch, they filed into the paint room to eat at a table covered with old “S.N.L.” cue cards. (The shop uses them as drop cloths.) DeMaria, however, was back at his desk. Surrounded by old set photographs and press clippings, he picked at green grapes, talked on a flip phone and scrolled through yellowed contact cards in his beloved Rolodex, with some numbers dating back to the 1950s.
“I been around the block, I’ll tell you that,” he said, flipping past contacts from nearly every NBC late-night show — over the years his crew has also built scenery for “The Tonight Show,” “Late Night” and others. “There’s over 80 set designers that I used to deal with.”
He started as a carpenter at the old NBC Brooklyn Studios in 1962, working on “The Sammy Davis Jr. Show,” “The Perry Como Show” and soap operas. He lit up when he recalled meeting the actors of the Rat Pack, petting Roy Rogers’s horse, Trigger, and keeping up with the outlandish requests of soap opera divas.
“Saturday Night Live” was like nothing DeMaria had seen before. When Cliff Stiegelbauer (Nicole’s grandfather), the head of NBC scenic services, gave him the assignment in 1974, the concept seemed bizarre and the production timeline impossible. The newly acquainted NBC crew in Brooklyn and the “S.N.L.” design team at 30 Rock were asked to create a system to pull off 10 to 12 sets weekly.
Leo Yoshimura, an “S.N.L.” production designer, has been with the show from the beginning. He remembers those early days as being long, tense and woefully devoid of fax machines. “I used to take the drawings by subway,” he said. “I had to hand-carry them to their shop.”
Some of the early “S.N.L.” designers were “longhaired young kids” who were “completely unschooled in television scenery,” Yoshimura recalled, resulting in plans that were unintelligible to DeMaria’s seasoned crew.
“I didn’t know what the hell I was looking at,” DeMaria confirmed, chuckling. Eventually the teams found a mutual language, but the schedule remained demanding.
“I had guys sleeping on [work] benches!” DeMaria said. “These young people today, 8:30 p.m., they got to go home. But we used to be there at 3 a.m.”
After nearly 1,000 episodes, the production process has long since been refined into a precision operation.
During the season, DeMaria arrives at the shop at 1 a.m. on Thursday to receive the set designs, then reviews the drawings and divides the work. About 45-50 crew members are split into teams, each assigned a set, and by 6 a.m., they are on site, assembling standard pieces like walls, doors and windows, some repurposed from previous shows.
Joe DeTullio, a production designer, communicates sketch changes as they come in via iPad. By Friday evening, everything must be built and packed for delivery to 30 Rock.
Nearly every “Saturday Night Live” set has undergone this process. DeMaria’s team built the living room for Chris Farley’s “Van Down By the River” sketch, the recording studio where Christopher Walken clamored for more cowbell.
In 50 years, the team has never missed a deadline, Nicole Stiegelbauer said. “That attitude started with my grandfather and Demo,” she said. “Hurricanes, tornadoes, no power, snow — whatever happens, it has to get done.”
DeMaria, however, credited the “people that work for me.”
Throughout his last day on the job, DeMaria fielded phone calls from craftspeople looking for positions in the shop. An industry patriarch and longtime member of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local No. 4, a stagehands union, he is still seen as the guy to call for work.
“He always looks out for you, even if you don’t deserve it,” said Billy Huerta, a shop carpenter who worked with DeMaria for 25 years. “Even if he doesn’t have work for them here, he’s always putting people to work at other places.”
While DeMaria made his reputation through his skills and mentorship, he is also known for having what Yoshimura called “a streak of wonderful fun.”
That is what DeTullio said he will miss the most about DeMaria. “He just has so much spirit in life,” he said. “He puts so much of that time and energy into the show.”
The last set DeMaria worked on was the Dubai office for the “Trump Middle East Trip” sketch, the cold open for the season finale. (That set is often the last to be built because the writers tweak the sketch until the last minute.) Soon it was break time.
“OK, coffee time!” DeMaria hollered into the scratchy intercom. But instead, Steve Paone, the shop’s project manager, led a confused DeMaria into the main hall. There he was met by his clapping, hooting and whistling crew, who had gathered to give him a send-off.
In the center of the room, encased in glass, was a gold-colored Rolodex packed with cards that contained, instead of long-disconnected phone numbers, handwritten notes from everyone in the shop thanking their colleague — for his leadership and dancing.
“I’ll be 88 soon; I never had a bored day in my life,” DeMaria told his team, “I want you all to follow my way and have the same: Live and be happy, and don’t ever stop.”
He waved his cane above the cheering crowd and pledged to close out his career in style at the wrap party the next night.
“I hope I can get rid of this cane,” he said. “Then I’m going to be on the dance floor like you wouldn’t believe!”
Video camera operator: April Zapata Goldberg
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