Actor considered the best Lois
Lane to appear opposite Superman
Noel Neill as Lois Lane with George Reeves as
Superman in the Adventures of Superman television series in the 1950s.
Michael Carlson
There may be some argument about
who was the best screen Superman, Christopher Reeve or George Reeves, or even
Henry Cavill, but most agree thatNoel Neill, who has died aged 95, was the best
of all those who played the superhero’s love interest, Lois Lane.
Neill took the role of the
Metropolis Daily Planet reporter who ran circles around Superman’s alter ego,
Clark Kent, in two movie serials and 78 episodes of the hit television series,
between 1948 and 1958. She pitched her portrayal somewhere between struggling
career girl and screwball comedian, and was particularly effective in Lane’s battles
with the fiery editor, Perry White. As Jack Larson, who played the cub reporter
Jimmy Olsen in the TV show, put it, “she had this wonderful perky touch to Lois
Lane, and basically she could do everything in one take”.
Neill made her film debut, unbilled,
in Mad Youth (1940) and got her first billing in a Henry Aldrich comedy, Henry
and Dizzy, two years later. Her first substantial part came as the neglected
daughter of a party-loving mother in Are These Our Parents? (1944), but,
despite being voted by US servicemen as their second favourite pin-up, just
behind Betty Grable, she was confined by Paramount mainly to bit parts: you can
spot her, uncredited, playing a hat-check girl in The Blue Dahlia (1946).
She moved to smaller studios, her
most notable role coming in Republic’s Adventures of Frank and Jesse James
(1948). But it was a series of seven “teenager” films she made at Monogram that
proved crucial to her career. She played Betty Rogers, a reporter on the
high-school paper, and the producer of those films, Sam Katzman, remembered her
when he was asked to recommend someone for the role of Lois Lane in Columbia
Pictures’ 1948 serial Superman, starring Kirk Alyn.
The pair reprised the roles in
another serial, Atom Man v Superman, two years later, but in 1951, when
producers put together a feature film as a dry run for a TV series, George
Reeves and Phyllis Coates were cast to play Superman and Lane. The TV show that
followed, Adventures of Superman, was an immediate hit in 1952, but other
commitments forced Coates to leave after the first season, and Neill took her
place.
Neill remained with Superman
until the programme was cancelled in 1958 after Reeves’s death, a presumed
suicide, at which point she retired. “I didn’t have any great ambition,” she said.
“Basically I’m a beach bum. I was married, we lived near the beach, that was
enough for me.”
She was born in Minneapolis,
where her father, David Neill, was news editor of the Star Tribune. Her mother,
LaVere (formerly Gorsboth), had been a vaudeville dancer, and Noel began
lessons at the age of four – she attended dance school with the young Andrews
Sisters. Her professionalism came naturally. By the time she was nine she had
made her debut singing on the radio, and while still in high school toured with
the Andrews Sisters, performing throughout the midwest.
Her father would have preferred
that she pursue journalism; by the time she had finished high school she had
written for Woman’s Wear Daily. But after graduation she and her mother headed
for Hollywood, where she was hired by Bing Crosby to sing at his Del Mar Turf
Club. His brother, Larry, became her agent, and landed her a contract with
Paramount Pictures.
Her last film role was in Lawless
Rider (1954), and she played in many of the early TV programmes that were
extensions of the B-movie and serial factories, including The Lone Ranger, The
Cisco Kid and Racket Squad. She later worked in United Artists’ TV department,
at one point handling Tom Selleck’s fan mail.
She returned to the screen to
play the mother of Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) in Richard Donner’s 1978 Superman
movie, reunited with Alyn as Lane’s father. She was unbilled. But fans
recognised her and she became a popular presence at film and comic book
conventions and fan gatherings. She also appeared with Jack Larson in the 1991
TV series Superboy, and as a woman leaving all her money to Superman’s nemesis,
Lex Luthor, in Superman Returns (2006).
In 2003 her publicist, Larry
Ward, published a biography of Neill called Truth, Justice and the American
Way. The following year Selleck presented her with a Golden Boot award, for her
acting in western films and programmes. And in 2010 she was named first lady of
Metropolis, Illinois, commemorated by a statue in the town centre.
The sculpture is of her as Lois
Lane, the first career woman many youngsters encountered in the 50s, but one
fated to be remembered as having “spent most of [my] time bound, gagged and
waiting for the bomb to go off”.
Neill’s first marriage was
annulled. Two further marriages ended in divorce.
• Noel Darleen Neill, actor, born
25 November 1920; died 3 July 2016