https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/phyllis-coates-dead-lois-lane-superman-1235616582/

The actress left 'Adventures of Superman' after one season, later to appear in such films as 'Girls in Prison' and 'I Was a Teenage Frankenstein.'

Phyllis Coates, the first actress to play Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane on television, only to leave the Adventures of Superman after just one season, has died. She was 96.

Coates, who also appeared in Republic Pictures serials and in such films as I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, died Wednesday of natural causes at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, her daughter Laura Press told The Hollywood Reporter.

A native of Wichita Falls, Texas, Coates first portrayed the headstrong Lois opposite George Reeves as the Man of Steel in the dark sci-fi movie Superman and the Mole Men (1951).

The success of that Lippert Pictures film — the first full-length theatrical feature starring the comic-book hero — led to the quick decision to start production on a syndicated show for television.

Coates segued to the series and got into jams as Lois in all 26 episodes of the first season (the Mole Men picture was turned into a two-parter titled “The Unknown People”). She got paid about $350 for each episode and said four or five were often shot at one time — so she always wore the same hat, suit and earrings.

“We were nearly blown up, beaten up, exploded, exploited — I guess it was because we were young and dumb, but we put up with a lot of stuff,” Coates said in Tom Weaver’s 2006 book, Science Fiction Stars and Horror Heroes. “Not too long ago I saw an episode [“Night of Terror”] where I got knocked out!”

The show was a sudden and unexpected hit, and Coates was asked to return for season two. However, she had signed to do a pilot for a series that was to star Jack Carson and Allen Jenkins (that show never happened) and took a pass.

“[Producer] Whitney Ellsworth offered me about four or five times what I was getting if I’d come back. But I really wanted to get out of Superman,” she said in the Weaver book.

Noel Neill, who had played Lois in 1948 and 1950 Superman Columbia serials starring Kirk Alyn, was then recruited to replace Coates and stayed with the series through its final five seasons.

The two Lois actresses were in the cast of the Soviet invasion film Invasion USA (1952), though they apparently never met. Reeves introduced them in 1957, but Neill, according to Coates, wanted nothing to do with her.

Born Gypsie Ann Evarts Stell, Coates came to Los Angeles as a teenager. She landed a job as a chorus girl and did skits in comedian Ken Murray’s vaudeville show, then performed in USO tours.

Coates signed a contract with Warner Bros. and stood out as the platinum-blonde wife Alice in several of the studio’s popular Joe McDoakes 10-minute comedy films. (Her husband, the everyman Joe, was played by George O’Hanlon, perhaps best known as the voice of futuristic cartoon leading man George Jetson).

After Superman, Coates appeared wearing a very short skirt in the Republic serials Jungle Drums of Africa (1952), opposite Clayton Moore of Lone Ranger fame, and in the title role of Panther Girl of the Kongo (1954).

“I had to ride an elephant all day,” she said in Science Fiction Stars and Horror Heroes. “And my legs were raw from the hair on the elephant — I never knew until then that an elephant even had hair!”

Coates picked on a fellow (and innocent) inmate in Girls in Prison (1956) and showed off her comedy chops as the mother of a precocious teenager in the 1958 Desilu sitcom This Is Alice.

In American International Pictures’ I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957), Coates played the secretary of a mad scientist (Whit Bissell); when she confronts him about making a monster, the creature (Gary Conway) kills her and feeds her remains to an alligator.

Coates also appeared on such TV shows as The Lone Ranger, Leave It to Beaver, Tales of Wells Fargo, Rawhide, The Untouchables (once in an episode helmed by Ida Lupino), Perry Mason, The Patty Duke Show and Gunsmoke.

She appeared as Barbara Hershey’s mother in James Bridges’ The Baby Maker (1970), produced by Jack Larson, who played Daily Planet cub reporter Jimmy Olsen on Superman.

In Goodnight, Sweet Marilyn (1987) Coates appeared as Marilyn Monroe’s mentally ill mother, Gladys Baker. And on a 1994 episode of ABC’s Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Coates was back in the superhero business as the mother of Teri Hatcher’s Lois.

Coates was portrayed by Lorry Ayers in Hollywoodland (2006), about an investigator (Adrien Brody) who looks into the mysterious 1959 death of Reeves (Ben Affleck) that was ruled a suicide.

Coates was married four times: to TV director Richard L. Bare, whom she met on the McDoakes films (he went on to helm 166 episodes of Green Acres), musician Robert Nelms, Leave It to Beaver director Norman Tokar and Howard Press, a doctor. All four marriages ended in divorce.

She is survived by another daughter, Zoe, and granddaughter Olivia.

As I've set forth in detail herein a few months back, I was fortunate enough to be one of the last broadcasters to interview Coates (on Radioactive Albuquerque with Bryan Styble, over KKNS Newstalk).

Coates was as charming and forthcoming as I had hoped during the hour...though I did make it a point to not raise the issue of George Reeves's suicide (much less the murder conspiracies about it that still circulate to this day).

I've said it on the air many times over the decades, but it always bears reiteration: Coates was the gold standard for the role of intrepid "girl reporter" Lois Lane. And THAT'S really sayin' somethin', because Joan Alexander's voice-acting--on the 1940s radio series opposite the voice(s!) of Bud Collyer as Kent/Superman--was consistently terrific, too. But even Alexander didn't clear the bar that Coates would later set in the role during that first, TV-noir season of "The Adventures of Superman".

Though I sure hoped Coates would improbably attain the century mark of life, she nevertheless had a great run.

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida

radioacti...@gmail.com <radioactiveseattle@gmail.com> wrote:
> As I've set forth in detail herein a few months back, I was fortunate enough to be one of the last broadcasters to interview Coates (on Radioactive Albuquerque with Bryan Styble, over KKNS Newstalk).
I have to ask,Mr. Styble...just what is it about you that sets off Geiger counters?
> BRYAN STYBLE/Florida

-=-=-
The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again,
at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.

You posed to me that question awhile back, Louis, and I apologize for not answering it then.

I first started using the "radioactive" motif for my broadcasts when I arrived at KKNS in what I enjoyed calling "Nuclear Mexico"...because as a student of history, Louis, you're surely quite aware that history's first nuclear detonation was at the so-called Trinity Site about 110 miles due south of the studio from which I did my "Radioactive Albquerque with Bryan Styble" broadcasts. And not only is New Mexico where the Los Alamos project was (up in the mountains east of the circular and notably UN-domed State Capitol building) at 7000 feet elevation, but 5000-feet-elevation Albuquerque is ALSO home to the famed, high-tech Sandia Laboratory, where, among other things, the Pentagon's thermo-nuclear warheads are designed.

But the PRINCIPAL reason I adopted the "radioactive" motif is that it--in a single word!--connotes the style of my commercial newstalk call-in radio work, i.e., high-energy with smile-in-the-voice enthusiasm*...and ALWAYS rendered whilst the host was STANDING, never sitting, behind the newtalk microphone. (At least 95% of national and local call-in hosts sit while broadcasting, but never yours truly.)

Thanks for asking, Louis; I trust the answer didn't disappoint.

STYBLE/Florida
============* The terrifically-talented Erin Hart--easily one of the best-prepared and skillful voices in all of talk radio, though her politics are WAY WAY to the left the decidedly-centrist Bryan Styble--was a colleague of mine for a couple of years at KIRO/Seattle [last I heard a few years back, she was by then heard over KOA/Denver]. The red-headed Hart popped into the studio during a commercial break on my show, and she told me the following: "Bryan, I just wanted to let you know how much I admire your enthusiastic style. Now, if I tried something similar, it would NEVER work--it would just sound phony and inappropriate for what I do. But on your show, it's perfect for how you handle your program. As I'm sure you realize, we're never going to agree on politics--but I did want you to know how great I think your program sounds." I've seldom been so gratified by any words of praise from a broadcasting colleague.**
** And THAT was only a couple or three months after my first-ever, not-in-the-least-genial exchange with the ever-emphatic Hart: Soon after my KIRO debut, I was doing show-prep at a desk in the newsroom while she was doing her show, which in a couple hours would conclude and then I'd begin mine. (I was new at the station in those days, so there was no "hand-off" segment tying our two broadcasts together at the end of hers.) Anyway, during a break of her show, Hart went to the fridge in the kitchenette, and found something missing. So she then forthwith marched over to the newsroom desk I was at, and these were the first words she ever spoke to me, quite accusingly: "Did you take my spinach quiche that was in the refrigerator?!" To which I responded immediately (and honestly): "I did not! Why don't you instead interrogate Popeye the Sailor Man?"

CORRECTION:

The Los Alamos compound was about 40 (country) miles west of course, not east, of the capital city Santa Fe.

STYBLE/Florida

On Thursday, October 12, 2023 at 6:44:54 PM UTC-4, radioacti...@gmail.com wrote:
> You posed to me that question awhile back, Louis, and I apologize for not answering it then.
>
> I first started using the "radioactive" motif for my broadcasts when I arrived at KKNS in what I enjoyed calling "Nuclear Mexico"...because as a student of history, Louis, you're surely quite aware that history's first nuclear detonation was at the so-called Trinity Site about 110 miles due south of the studio from which I did my "Radioactive Albquerque with .......etc., etc.,

Good lord. This is a new low, even for you. Keep reliving those "glory days" B S. Zzzzzzzzzz.

On Thursday, October 12, 2023 at 6:44:54 PM UTC-4, radioacti...@gmail.com wrote:
> You posed to me that question awhile back, Louis, and I apologize for not answering it then.
>
> I first started using the "radioactive" motif for my broadcasts when I arrived at KKNS in what I enjoyed calling "Nuclear Mexico"...because as a student of history, Louis, you're surely quite aware that history's first nuclear detonation was at the so-called Trinity Site about 110 miles due south of the studio from which I did my "Radioactive Albquerque with Bryan Styble" broadcasts..........etc., etc., Zzzzzzzzzzz.

Good lord. This is a new low, even for you. Keep reliving those "glory days" B S. As if anybody cares. No matter how hard you try.

On Thursday, October 12, 2023 at 9:45:26 PM UTC-4, radioacti...@gmail.com wrote:
> CORRECTION:
>
> The Los Alamos compound was about 40 (country) miles west of course, not east, of the capital city Santa Fe.
>
> STYBLE/Florida
Why is almost every post of yours followed by you correcting yourself? Maybe you should concentrate more on accuracy instead of trying to convince everyone (unsuccessfully) how "clever" you are. Sad.