Phyllis Coates, 1st Actress to Play Lois Lane on TV, Dies at 96

Phyllis Coates, the first actress to play Lois Lane in a feature film and also the first to play her on TV, died Wednesday of natural causes at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California, her daughter told THR.

She was 96.

Coates had been one of the last remaining stars of '50s TV, and her career in the medium actually stretched back to her debut on a series called "The Faraway Hill" in 1946.

In 1951, she first played Lois in the Lippert Pictures film "Superman and the Mole Men," the first Superman feature of any kind. It was a smash, leading to her work on the first season of the ensuring TV series "Adventures of Superman," starring George Reeves as the Man of Steel.

Coates left after the 1952-1953 season, in spite of the show's status as a pop cultural phenomenon, because she was committed to shoot a pilot. She was secretly thrilled to have an excuse, having described the show as physically grueling work for low pay.

"We worked six days a week, and George had open bar in his dressing room," she said in 2012. "We worked from 6:30 or 7 in the morning till 6:30 or 7 at night — and nobody batted an eye."

Born January 15, 1927, in Wichita Falls, Texas, Coates worked in vaudeville as a showgirl.

On film, she played Alice McDoakes from 1948-1953 and again in 1956 in a series of shorts starring George O'Hanlon as Joe McDoakes, a goofy everyman. They were directed by the prolific Richard L. Bare, to whom she was briefly wed.

Along with appearing in serials like "Jungle Drums of Africa" (1953) and "Panther Girl of the Kongo" (1955), she acted in such films as "Blues Busters" (1950), "Girls in Prison" (1956), "I Was a Teenage Frankenstein" (1957), "Blood Arrow" (1958), "The Baby Maker" (1970), and "Goodnight, Sweet Marilyn" (1989).

On TV, she was on the inaugural episode of "Death Valley Days" (1952), "The Lone Ranger" (1953), was a regular on the early sitcom "This Is Alice" (1958-1959), and was on three "Perry Mason" episodes (1958, 1961 & 1964).

Coates — who had for years kept Lois Lane at a distance — played the character's mom on the season finale of the first season of "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman" in 1994. After that, she made two appearances on "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" (1994) and played one final part, in "Hollywood: The Movie" (1996).

Including Bare, she was married and divorced four times, and is survived by her three children. In 2012, Bare and Coates reunited at the Cinecon fest in L.A., at which he surprised her with photos from their honeymoon. "It allll comes back to me!" she joked.