Noel Neill, the actress who played Lois Lane for nearly 80 episodes on Adventures of Superman, died on July 3. She was 95.
In a Facebook post from her friend and biographer Larry Ward, he wrote of her work as Lois on Superman, “After years of playing bit parts in bad films and great roles in forgotten films, she finally found her niche. As a teenager she knew all about the newspaper business from her father and she had also actually written for Women's Wear Daily in the late 1930s, so it was a role she believed she was born to play. And as she would admit in interviews later in life, she simply played herself.”
Interestingly, this was not Neill”s first time as the intrepid reporter. She played Lois in the late 1940s in the movie-serial Superman, alongside Kirk Alyn. Curiously, however she was not the original Lois Lane on the long-running Adventures of Superman with George Reeves. She actually replaced Phyllis Coates, who reportedly left due to a scheduling conflict.
While Superman may have gone off the air after 1958, this would be far from Neill”s end with the hero. She would have cameo roles in the 1978 movie Superman, the TV series Superboy, and the 2006 film Superman Returns.