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Phyllis Coates, who played the reporter Lois Lane, one of the most enduring characters in popular culture, in a theatrical film and the first season of the popular \u201cAdventures of Superman\u201d<\/a> television series, died on Wednesday in Woodland Hills, Calif. She was 96.<\/p>\n Her daughter Laura Press confirmed the death, at the Motion Picture & Television Fund\u2019s retirement community.<\/p>\n Ms. Coates was a busy if not well-known actress when she became the second onscreen Lois. Noel Neill<\/a> had played the role in two 15-part movie serials, \u201cSuperman\u201d (1948) and \u201cAtom Man vs. Superman\u201d (1950), in which Kirk Alyn played the Man of Steel.<\/p>\n \u201cBut when there were talks about making a theatrical film \u2014 which would become \u2018Superman and the Mole Men\u2019<\/a> \u2014 Kirk Alyn<\/a> didn\u2019t want to do the role anymore,\u201d Larry T. Ward, the author of \u201cTruth, Justice & the American Way,\u201d a biography of Ms. Neill, said in a phone interview. \u201cHe felt he had been typecast. So rather than just replacing Superman, they replaced the entire cast.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In \u201cMole Men\u201d (1951), Lois and her fellow Daily Planet reporter Clark Kent, who is also Superman (George Reeves replaced Mr. Alyn in the role), witness the panic in a small town when two small, glowing, balding underground beings emerge from their home deep in an oil well.<\/p>\n The \u201cAdventures of Superman\u201d TV series debuted the next year, with Ms. Coates, Mr. Reeves, Jack Larson as the cub reporter Jimmy Olsen and John Hamilton as Perry White, The Daily Planet\u2019s cantankerous top editor.<\/p>\n Ms. Coates\u2019s Lois was serious and sometimes bullheaded. But she sometimes needed Superman to save her; Lois was an archetypal damsel in distress (and was even more so when Ms. Neill played her). This was the case when she was trapped in a mine, held on a ledge outside the newspaper\u2019s building by a man who had strapped dynamite to himself, and captured by thugs smuggling fugitives into Canada.<\/p>\n The series was not lavishly produced, as was evident in the characters\u2019 wardrobes, which rarely changed.<\/p>\n