Where To Watch
Noel Neill's life after The Adventures of Superman— here's what happened to the actress when she stopped being Lois Lane
Learn all about the real-life Lois Lane's career after she gave up being a newspaperwoman! This is why you didn't see her in a ton of projects after Superman.
Sometimes we don't recognize how great someone is until they're gone. It happens all the time. Talent in its own time is taken for granted, only truly appreciated in its absence. Think about all the artists you learn were penniless when they passed, only to have their work hailed as important and commercially viable after their deaths. It's unfair, but that's often how art works. We take things for granted as if they're supposed to happen that way.
In the acting world, this phenomenon manifests when an artist has one great big breakout role, and then disappears. Rather than being rewarded for what they brought to this star-making effort, these actors are cast aside when they step away from their defining project.
A great example is Noel Neill from The Adventures of Superman. She's phenomenal as Lois Lane, Superman's love interest and a well-rounded character in her own right. But ask the public what happened to Ms. Neill after Superman, and you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone familiar with her later life.
There she was, next to the Man of Steel for 78 episodes of The Adventures of Superman between 1953 and 1958. So, then what happened?
A look at her filmography only tells part of the story. There's a 20-year gap after the Superman TV show. What was her next credit? Well, it was a short cameo in the cinematic Superman, as she played the mother of a childhood Lois Lane in the 1978 theatrical release starring Christopher Reeve. The uncredited role set the tone for the remainder of Neill's career. She was only really ever associated with Superman-related projects.
However, Noel Neill was so much more than an actress, as illustrated in The New York Times obituary that ran after she died in 2016. While she made a name for herself on the small screen, Neill's life was much bigger than television.
When The Adventures of Superman was cancelled after the untimely death of actor George Reeves, Neill pivoted to public relations. She went on to work for United Artists' television department. Memorably, she was in charge of handling Tom Selleck's fan mail during Magnum P.I.
As Superman recaptured the nation's imagination in the late '70s and throughout the '80s, Neill was embraced by fans new and old, as she appeared at fan conventions all over. She would also appear in an episode of the TV series The Adventures of Superboy before making one more cameo in Superman Returns.
Most importantly, though, was Neill's role as an inspiration to women everywhere. Throughout her life, Neill received an outpouring of goodwill as many women told her that she was their inspiration for pursuing a job in journalism.
"It was a man's world, and you didn't want to be too cranky," she said of the newspaper industry in a 2002 interview with The Knoxville News-Sentinel. "When I played her, I could relate to her more if she wasn't bossy." While Clark Kent gets all the good press about being "mild-mannered," Neill's portrayal of Lois Lane fit the bill as well, and reflected feminist professionalism in a 1950s workplace.
Related
