Phyllis Coates
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Phyllis Coates (born Gypsie Ann Evarts Stell on January 15, 1927 in Wichita Falls, Texas) is an American actress.
After finishing high school she went to Los Angeles to study at UCLA. However, a chance meeting with entertainner Ken Murray in a Hollywood restaurant resulted in her working in his vaudeville show as a chorus girl. She later performed as one of Earl Carroll's showgirls at his Earl Carroll Theatre. She went on to appear in various films and TV shows mostly during the 1950s.
She is best known for having played a strong-willed Lois Lane in the first 26 episodes of Adventures of Superman, wherein she was given equal billing with George Reeves, even for a few episodes in which she did not appear. Her powerful "damsel in distress" scream was used to good effect in several episodes.
Unlike Noel Neill, who played Lois Lane in serials as well as the TV series, and has traded on it since then extensively, Coates generally made an effort to distance herself from her connection with the Superman series. However, Coates did have a guest role as Lois Lane's mother, in the wedding episode of the 1990s TV series Lois and Clark.
Her best remembered screen role came in the campy horror film I Was a Teenage Frankenstein.
Her friends call her by her birth name, "Gypsie".
