Phyllis Coates

Phyllis Coates spent more than fifty years as an American actress on film and television. Born in Wichita Falls, Texas, she attended Los Angeles City College, and a chance meeting with the vaudeville comic Ken Murray in a Hollywood restaurant set her on the stage. From Murray she learned comic timing, then danced and performed comedy in his Blackouts revues, worked as an Earl Carroll showgirl, and took part in a USO tour of Anything Goes. After 20th Century Fox signed her in 1944, she became a regular in the studio's Joe McDoakes short comedies. Her best-known part was the reporter Lois Lane, played in the film Superman and the Mole-Men (1951) and in the debut season of Adventures of Superman. Her later films included Blues Busters (1950), I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957) and The Incredible Petrified World (1959). She also had guest roles on many western and drama series, among them Perry Mason and Gunsmoke.