Whether we want to or not, we all become our parents.
My dad used to tell a story that the one and only time he played pub trivia as a young man, he was paired with his best friend Joe, and the question that would give them the win was “who played Lois Lane on Adventures of Superman?” He wrote this as his answer:
“Well, actually, there were two people who played the role: Phyllis Coates in the first season and Noel Neill after that.”
The trivia master was so impressed that he gave them the win without even reading the other team’s answer.
I don’t know how I became the guy at Multiversity who eulogizes Lois Lanes, but here we are again. Phyllis Coates was the second ever on-screen Lois, after Noel Neill originated the role in the serials with Kirk Allyn, but was unavailable for the start of the shooting of Superman vs the Mole Men, which was the theatrical ‘test balloon’ for what became Adventures. After the first season, Coates exited the show due to a scheduling conflict, and Neill replaced her.
I’ve written at length about the import of both this series and the Christopher Reeve/Margot Kidder series of Superman films in my childhood, and so when I think about Superman, even before the comics, I think about the dozens of hours I spent watching a small group of actors play these roles. Of the three Loises, Coates was always the one that least appealed to me as a kid but, looking back now, her performance is easily the most bold of the three.
While none of the on-screen Loises took shit from anyone, Coates took the least shit of any of them. She practically brow beats Clark Kent in every scene they share, and is so bold with the two-bit crooks that make up all of Adventures‘ rogues gallery that it seems like a miracle that she wasn’t shot in just about every episode. While the stereotype of the ‘brassy woman’ was well worn at this time, it seems truly unusual to place Coates as the alpha in Adventures. I mean, the star of the show is a goddamned alien Übermensch who can do anything, and most of the people he’s fighting are too stupid to not throw a gun at him.
And yet, Coates never seems like she’s all that impressed by Superman. Sure, she’s thankful for his saving her, but you get the impression that she would’ve been okay even without him.
Now, both Neill and Kidder had a bit of that, too, but both of them added in a more starry-eyed love for Superman to the mix. That mix, honestly, is more palatable and nuanced than what Coates brought to the role which is, perhaps, why she’s the least well remembered of the big 3 Loises. (No disrespect to Terri Hatcher, Erica Durance, Kate Bosworth, or Amy Adams)
Coates also did not embrace the role in the way that Neill or Jack Larson (Jimmy Olsen) did, and it took until the 90s for her to make any sort of peace with being typecast as Lois Lane, playing Hatcher’s mother on Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman in one episode. But even that is reflective of her portrayal of Lois. “You want me to be impressed by something I did in the past and let it continue to define me? Hell no!”
Thank you, Phyllis.
