Phyllis Coates, TV's Original Lois Lane, Has Died At 96

She originally played Lane in Superman's first non-serial film

Phyllis Coates, who was the originator of Lois Lane portrayals on television, having played her in the first season of Adventures of Superman to George Reeves, died Wednesday of natural causes at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, her daughter Laura Press announced. She was 96 years old.

Indeed, while Adventures of Superman ran for six seasons from 1952 to 1958, Coates only played the intrepid reporter for the first season, which made for 26 appearances. While some of it is chalked up to conflicts with producers, it also involved the way television was run back then. The show was having trouble getting a sponsor for the second season. It was taking long enough that with projects waiting in the wings, had to step away and became unavailable, even after being offered a quintupled salary to return. Noel Neill, who played Lois in preceding 1948 and 1950 film serials Superman and Atom Man vs. Superman, would take on the role for the subsequent five seasons completed before Reeves’s notorious death.

Coates was born orn Gypsie Ann Evarts Stell in Wichita Falls, Texas, on January 15, 1927. Coates launched her showbiz career in vaudeville-style performances and as a chorus girl during the 1940s, which frequently meant touring with the USO. Her career would continue into the decade with small roles in such pictures as 1948’s Smart Girls Don’t Talk and 1949’s My Foolish Heart. She also appeared in a series of “Joe McDoakes” comedy shorts as Alice MacDoakes. Where her time as Lane actually began was the 1951 feature film Superman and the Mole Men, which was DC’s first feature film adaptation and became a de facto pilot for Adventures of Superman, so less solidly than say, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.

She would appear in the monster movie I Was A Teenage Frankenstein and on ’50s and ’60s TV shows like The Lone Ranger, Lassie, Leave It To Beaver, Rawhide, Perry Mason, and The Untouchables, and later on Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. Helping to solidify the tradition of preceding iteration actors appearing in current DC adaptations started by Neill and her serial Superman Kirk Alyn in a once-deleted cameo in 1978’s Superman film staring Christopher Reeve, Coates portrayed the mother of Teri Hatcher’s Lois Lane in a first season episode of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.

Coates was the last surviving Adventures of Superman cast member. She married four times, all ending in divorce. She first married McDoakes shorts director Richard L. Bare, later of Green Acres, and then jazz musician Robert Nelms, Leave It to Beaver director Norman Tokar and medical doctor Howard Press. She is survived by Laura and another daughter, Zoe, a reported third daughter, and granddaughter Olivia.

Sources: Deadline, TVLine, People