Phyllis Coates was best known for her portrayal of reporter Lois Lane in the 1951 film Superman and the Mole Men and the first season of the television series Adventures of Superman. Coates died on October 11, 2023, at the age of 96.
Coates is the daughter of William Robert Rush Stell and Lorraine “Lizzie” Jack Teel. After graduating from Odessa High School, she moved to Los Angeles with her mother. Coates attended Los Angeles City College.
Who is Phyllis Coates’s ex-husband, Robert Nelms, and why divorce?
Phyllis Coates married jazz pianist Robert Nelms in 1950, gave birth to a daughter, and divorced in 1953. Robert Nelms served less than three years in community corrections for one of the largest cemetery fraud schemes in Indianapolis.
Coates agreed to appear as Lois’s mother in the first season finale of the 1990s television series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. Noel Neill, who also played Lois Lane in film and TV series, had already been Lois’s mother in the 1978 film Superman.
