If I were to argue that Noel Neill was the very first and most prolific actress to portray Superman heroine Lois Lane, you might respond that Phyllis Coates was actually both the first Lois Lane in both the movies and on TV. And you would be correct. Phyllis Coates portrayed Lois Lane for the duration of the first season of The Adventures of Superman and also starred in the theatrical movie Superman and the Mole-Men in 1951. I had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Coates on three different occasions.
The first was at Dinner hosted by the Masquers Club on Catalina Island on July 18, 1992. The theme of the evening was “A Roaring Twenties Dinner & Dince” (spelled correctly). Therefore, Ms. Coates was dressed to the nines as a gangster’s moll when we met. Unfortunately, the photo that I have was water damaged – so I am relunctantly displaying it here becaused I suffer from completism. (I later found the negative and intended to replace the crummy photo – but alas, take a look at how badly the negative was damaged!) Not knowing what celebrities would be attending this soiree, I didn’t bring along any photos to get signed and only had those in attendence sign my program.
My version of the Superman curse: my photo with Phyllis Coates in 1992 was doomed from the start!
The next time I ran into Phyllis Coates was in Monterey, California at the Edgar Kennedy Celebration which took place July 3-6, 1997. There I had her sign a small stack (maybe seven or eight) of the photos seen at the top of the posting from The Adventures of Superman. In addition, she was kind enough to sign the interesting photo below of her with Harpo Marx of Marx Brothers fame. It’s always cool to find celebrites posed with the classic comedians of the golden age.
Finally, I met up with her again this past February at the Hollywood Collectors Show. Since I had already had her sign numerous photos, I didn’t need to get any more so just asked her friend Bart Williams (who Bob is friends with) if I could pose with her with one of the photos she had signed for me in 1997. The resulting photo – obviously – is below…
Celebrities from the February 2007 HCS will continue…
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