Another one for my fellow grey beards. Noel Neill, Lois Lane in the 1950's Superman TV series, has dies. She was 95.
She first portrayed the Daily Planet reporter in a 15 episode 1948 Superman movie serial. Kirk Alyn played Superman/Clark Kent. When the George Reeves TV series started in 1952, Phyllis Coates was cast as Lane. She soon left the series and was replaced by Neill. The series stayed in production until Reeves death in 1959. It still lives in reruns on cable.
She did have a newspaper background. She was born in Minneapolis on Nov. 25, 1920, the daughter of David Neill, a newspaperman who became the news editor of what is now The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and his wife, LaVere, a former dancer and singer.
Women often told Ms. Neill that they had been inspired to go into journalism by seeing her character work as an equal alongside newspapermen, but Ms. Neill saw her Lois as mild-mannered, a reflection of the prefeminist 1950s.
“It was a man’s world, and you didn’t want to be too cranky,” she told The Knoxville News-Sentinel in a 2002 interview. “When I played her, I could relate to her more if she wasn’t bossy.”
She had appeared in many movies prior to her arrival in Metropolis. Later, she appeared as teen aged Lois Lane's mother in the 1978 Christopher Reeve Superman film.
R.I.P., Lois, I mean, Noel.
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