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Superman's Lois Lane dies at 95



Lois Lane, from the 1940s Superman series died on 3 July 2016 at the age of 95. Noel Neill played Lois Lane, the young female reporter for The Daily Planet, who secretly suspected that her mild-mannered colleague, Clark Kent, was really Superman, the hero.

Noel Neill (1920-2016) was 28 when she first starred as Lois Lane. In 1948 she starred with Kirk Alyn (who played Superman) in 15 episodes of the movie serial based on the American comic books (created by Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster). In 1952 she starred with George Reeves as Superman. George Reeves died in 1959.

Louis Lane’s outfit was a grey suit, with a hat and pearls. While she was reporting, she would encounter danger and Superman would always rescue her. For 15 years in the Superman comic books, Lois Lane was also Clark Kent’s wife.

Neill’s father, David Neill, was a real-life news editor of The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and her mother was a singer and dancer. Neill played the banjo as a child and planned to be a journalist like her father. But at 17, she auditioned for a singing job at the Del Mar racetrack in Southern California. One of the racetrack’s owners, Bing Crosby – the ‘crooner’ – noticed her and introduced her to his brother Larry, a theatrical agent. She starred in about 40 roles before playing Lois Lane.

After the Superman series, she went into public relations for the United Artists television department, where one of her assignments was handling Tom Sellick’s fan mail.

By the 1970s she was ‘rediscovered’ by Superman fans and attended fan conventions. She was cast in a cameo role as the mother of Lois Lane in Superman (1978) with Christopher Reeve playing the comic book hero. She also appeared in the spin-offs The Adventures of Superboy (1991), the Surge of Power (2004), and Superman Returns (2006).

She was married three times – to make-up artist Hal Lierley in 1943, which was annulled in the same year, William Behrens (1953-62), and Joel Taylor (1963-71). She leaves no immediate survivors.





http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/05/arts/television/noel-neill-the-lois-lane-to-george-reevess-superman-dies-at-95.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=mini-moth&region=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below&_r=0



MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).


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