Noel Neill
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| Noel Neill | |
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 Noel Neill in February 2008 |
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| Born | November 25, 1920 Minneapolis, Minnesota |
Noel Neill (born November 25, 1920) is an American actress in motion pictures and television best known as Lois Lane in the television series The Adventures of Superman.
She was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A popular photographic model while in her teens, Neill signed a contract with Paramount Pictures and appeared in many of the studio's feature films and short subjects. In the mid-1940s she had a leading role in one of Monogram Pictures' wayward-youth melodramas, and she became a familiar face in Monogram features for the next several years. She appears in the last Charlie Chan movie, Sky Dragon (1949). She also played damsels in distress in Monogram westerns and Republic Pictures serials.
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[edit] Superman
In 1945 producer Sam Katzman gave Noel Neill a recurring role in his series of "Teen Agers" musical comedies; she played an aggressive reporter for a high-school newspaper. When Katzman was casting his Superman serial for Columbia Pictures, he remembered Noel Neill's newshawk portrayals and signed her to play Lois Lane. She played the role in the 1948 and 1950 serials, with Kirk Alyn playing Clark Kent/Superman.
When Superman came to television in 1951, veteran movie actors George Reeves and Phyllis Coates took the leading roles for the first season. By the time the series found a sponsor and a network time slot, Coates had committed herself to another production, so the producers called on Noel Neill, who had played Lois Lane in the movies. She continued in the role until the series went off the air in 1958, making her the actress most closely associated with the role.
Unlike Phyllis Coates, who distanced herself from the role for the most part (Coates did appear as Lois Lane's mother in one episode of Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman), Noel Neill embraced the role and exploited it. She made frequent talks on college campuses during the 1970s, when interest in the series was revived, and endeared herself to her audiences with her warmth and humor.
Neill has continued to appear as Lois Lane in other productions. She had a cameo in the 1978 film Superman as Lois Lane's mother (Kirk Alyn played Lois' father in the same short scene). She appeared in an episode of the TV series Superboy alongside Jack Larson (who had played Jimmy Olsen in Adventures of Superman). The Tonight Show with Jay Leno featured Neill's personal appearance at the Metropolis, Illinois, Superman Festival. She has a guest appearance in the independent superhero film Surge of Power: The Stuff of Heroes (a character refers to her as "Aunt Lois"), plays the role of dying widow Gertrude Vanderworth in Superman Returns (2006).
In 2003, an authorized biography of Neill was published. It was entitled Truth, Justice, & The American Way: The Life And Times Of Noel Neill, The Original Lois Lane by Larry Thomas Ward (Nicholas Lawrence Books, softcover, ISBN 0-9729466-0-8). A limited-edition, expanded version of the book was released in 2006.
Noel Neill and Jack Larson donated their time to record commentaries for the DVD releases of the Superman TV episodes. Noel remarked on the documentary Look, Up in the Sky: The Amazing Story of Superman that a frequent question she would get from children at the time was, "Why don't you know that Clark Kent was Superman, just wearing a pair of those darn eyeglasses?" And Neill replied to the children (and later to college audiences), "I don't want to lose my job!"
[edit] Notes
- In the 1956 episode "Tomb of Zaharan", Lois Lane was stated to be 26 years old, exactly 10 years younger than Neill was at the time.
- It's a staple of Hollywood history that Betty Grable's pin-up was #1 among G.I.s during World War II, but rumor had it that the #2 poster girl was Noel Neill.[1]
[edit] References
- ^ Larry Thomas, Ward (2003). Truth, Justice, and the American Way: The Life and Times of Noel Neill. Nicholas Lawrence Books. ISBN 978-0972946605.
