NOEL NEILL: THE GUARDIAN OBITUARY

My obit of the wonderful Noel Neill, the Lois Lane I and my generation grew up with, is online at The Guardian now, you can link to it here. But it's been revamped a bit by the paper from what I originally wrote--mostly a kind of reordering--and I think it makes better sense as originally written, so here it is. Phyllis Coates was more classically beautiful than Neill (in fact I saw a number of outlets who used a picture of Coates with George Reeves to illustrate their obits and one that had Neill posed with Kirk Alyn and billed Alyn as Reeves) but Neill had that wonderful combination of pizzaz and vulnerability that made the character work in the context of Saturday serials and the serials' offspring on early 50s TV. You could still see that energy in photos of Neill well into her 80s, making appearances and looking remarkably youthful, energetic, and, as ever, happy. RIP.

NOEL NEILL: THE GREATEST LOIS LANE

There may be some argument about who the best screen Superman was, Christopher Reeve, George Reeves or one of the more recent actors all have their proponents. But there seems an almost universal agreement that Noel Neill, who has died aged 95, was the best of all the actresses who played Lois Lane, the ace reporter who frequently required rescuing by Superman while serving as his love interest, but who ran circles around Superman's alter-ego, Clark Kent, at the Metropolis Daily Planet. Neill played Lane in two movie serials and then in 78 episodes of the hit television series, pitching her somewhere between struggling career girl and screwball comedy, particularly effective in her battles with the fiery editor Perry White (John Hamilton). As Jack Larson, who played cub reporter Jimmy Olsen on the TV show put it, 'she had this wonderful perky touch to Lois Lane, and basically she could do everything in one take.' She was the television show's last surviving member.

Her professionalism came naturally. Neill was born 25 November 1920 in Minneapolis, where her father David was news editor of the Star Tribune. Her mother, LaVere, had been a vaudeville dancer, and Noel began lessons at age four; she attended dance school with the young Andrews Sisters. By the time she was nine she'd made her debut singing on the radio, and while still in high school toured with the Andrews Sisters performing throughout the midwest. Her father would have preferred she pursue journalism; by the time she'd finished high school she'd written for Woman's Wear Daily. But after graduation she and her mother headed for Hollywood, where she got hired by Bing Crosby to sing at his Del Mar Turf Club. She also appeared with Bing's brother Bob's band, but another brother, Larry, became her agent, and landed her a contract with Paramount Pictures. 

She made her film debut, unbilled, in Mad Youth (1940) and got her first billing in a Henry Aldrich comedy Henry and Dizzy two years later. In October 1943 she married make-up artist Harold Lierley, but the marriage was quickly annulled. By that time she'd also become the second-most popular pin up for US servicemen, after only Betty Grable.  Her first substantial part came as the neglected and 'nubile' daughter of a party-girl mother in Are These Our Parents (1944), but despite her popularity with the troops, Paramount confined her to mostly bit parts; you can spot her, uncredited, playing a hatcheck girl in The Blue Dahlia (see below left). She moved to smaller studios, with her most notable role coming in Republic's Adventures of Frank and Jesse James (1948). But it was a series of seven 'Teen Ager' films she made at Monogram which proved crucial to her career. She played Betty Rogers, a reporter on the high school paper, and producer Sam Katzman remembered that when he recommended her for the role of Lois Lane in Columbia Pictures' 1948 serial Superman, starring Kirk Alyn.

The pair reprised the roles in a serial, Atom Man versus Superman, two years later, but in 1951, when producers put together a feature film as a dry-run for a TV series, Superman was played by George Reeves and Lane by Phyllis Coates. The show was an immediate hit in 1952, but other commitments forced Coates to leave after the first season and Neill took her place, making the part her own. She continued with small parts; oddly, she played bits in back-to-back Oscar winners: An American In Paris (1951) and The Greatest Show On Earth (1952), both times unbilled, sadly. Her last film role was Lawless Rider, released in 1954, but she also appeared in many of the early television programmes which were extensions of the B movie and serial factories, including The Lone Ranger, The Cisco Kid and Racket Squad. Neill remained with Superman until the show was cancelled in 1958 following Reeves' death, a presumed suicide, at which point she retired. 'I didn't have any great ambition,' she said. 'Basically I'm a beach bum. I was married, we lived near the beach, that was enough for me.'

She had married William Behrens in 1953; they divorced in 1962, and she married Joel Taylor. They would divorce seven years later. She went to work at United Artists' television department, at one point handling Tom Selleck's fan mail. She returned to the screen in Richard Donner's 1978 Superman movie, reunited with Kirk Alyn to play Lois Lane (Margot Kidder)'s parents. She was, of course, unbilled. But fans recognised her and she became a popular presence at film and comic book conventions and fan gatherings. She would also appear, with Jack Larson, in the 1991 TV series Superboy, and as a woman leaving all her money to Superman's nemesis Lex Luthor in Superman Returns (2006).

In 2003 her publicist, Larry Ward, published a biography of Neill called Truth Justice and the American Way. The following year Tom Selleck presented her with a Golden Boot award, for her acting in western films and TV. And in 2010 she was named First Lady of Metropolis, Illinois, and the following year a statue of her was unveiled in the town centre. It pictures her as Lois Lane, the first career woman many youngsters encountered in the Fifties, but one fated to be remembered as one who 'spent most of (my) time bound, gagged and waiting for the bomb to go off.' She died 3 July 2016, after a long illness, in Tuscon, Arizona, and leaves no survivors.

REMEMBERING PAT SUMMERALL

Pat Summerall always reminded me of George Reeves, the guy who played Superman. The resemblance isn't overpowering, though I think it's there, but it's more the demeanour, that kind of quiet authority that you don't even realise someone has until after you've stopped to think about it and appreciate what it is you've experienced.

I'm old enough to remember Summerall as a player, though I won't claim to have ever seen him play end. He was a good kicker for the Giants, though not as good as Don Chandler, the team's punter, who assumed both jobs when Pat left. But he found his place as an announcer, one of the first to make the transition from the football field to the broadcast booth. This was something a few baseball players, most notably Dizzy Dean, had done, in radio, but since New York was America's media capital, and the Giants were New York's team (and a very good one in the late 50s/early 60s) it wasn't a surprise that the glamourous former college stars Frank Gifford or Kyle Rote should move into broadcasting. What was more surprising was that a kicker would. Rote was never a natural, and Gifford relied on his looks and charm. Summerall was something else entirely.

He was good enough looking, but he had a golden voice, not as deep as Ray Scott's but authoritative in a resonant quiet way. People forget he started his career as a colour man, working with greats like Chris Schenkel (remind me to tell you my story about supplying security for the Schenk when we did a Barry McGuigan fight in Belfast), Jack Buck and Scott, one of football's alltime best. Scott had the pipes to match Pat, but that was the problem: you had two guys talking beautifully with each other, but Pat just didn't naturally take to being the show horse.

He found his metier when he was paired with Tom Brookshier for CBS, with producer Bob Wussler. Brookie was outspoken, and Pat was the perfect foil to get the best from him. But after seven years, CBS replaced Brookshier with John Madden, creating probably the best football broadcast pair ever, and maybe the best pair anywhere. Madden brought a new perspective to the booth, a coach's ability to break down plays for an audience, and a creative intelligence that needed to be both indulged and directed. He delivered his words with bombast, and then Summerall would bring us all back to earth, back to down and distance, back to the beauties of the game itself.

Because no one was a better master of the understatement, of letting the game speak for itself, than Summerall. Those of us sometimes unable to do such things appreciate them even more, especially when they're done so well. If you want a snapshot of the difference between Summerall and Madden compare their work as hardware store pitchmen: Pat for TrueValue and Madden for Ace.

They had started to get stale when they were hired away by Fox, after the Murdoch network spent big to take the NFC contract from CBS. The huge deals from Fox (especially Madden) and the move rejuvenated the pairing, until Madden jumped to ABC for Monday Night Football, where he was teamed with Al Michaels, probably the second-best play-by-play man the NFL's had. Madden was again rejuvenated. Summerall retired briefly in 2002, then came back to work with Brian Baldinger, which was a very good pairing; Baldy's only fault was that sometimes he tried too hard to be Madden (and I imagine someone upstairs was asking for that). I caught the two of them on a Cotton Bowl one holiday season, and thought they still worked together well.

We knew Pat was a recovering alcoholic; his face would tell you that if you didn't know it. But I knew a lot of people like that when I was working for ABC, and since, and about most of them you hear various stories. You never did about Pat, in fact, I can never remember a harsh word being said. He seemed to handle himself outside the booth the way he did inside it—with a minimum of fuss and an attitude of respect. He respected his audience, his colour commentators, and the game. That's what came through his wonderful voice on the television screen. He was the best. But when I shut my eyes (and eyes) I can still see him kicking for the Giants.

ARGO: I.T.'S OSCAR WATCH

With its copping of best picture and best director masks at the Baftas, on top of the DGA award, Argo has become the front-runner for the Oscar, which is interesting given its opposition. Argo is a very likeable film, well-made, with real suspense in its last act, and an atmosphere of menace in Iran and Washington both, contrasted with an atmosphere of anarchic freedom and humour in Hollywood.

Which is why, call me cynical, I'd popped Argo as an Oscar favourite as soon as I saw it, for two connected reasons which both have to do with Hollywood's perception of itself. The first is obvious—as much as the movie shows the CIA saving the day, it is the Hollywood producer (in fact the film's only totally fictional western character) and make-up guy who actually come up with the goods, and in the process provide us with self-satirizing boffo yucks. The second is related: the Tehran rescue contrasts with the failed attempt at rescuing the hostages in the US embassy—the signal moment of Jimmy Carter's administration. Carter gets little credit for the Argo rescue (neither do the Canadians—more on that later) but the upshot of his failure was turn to the country over to Hollywood, in the person of Ronald Reagan, who was selling America fantasies they wanted to believe, as opposed to Carter's visions of grim reality. That we now know Reagan's people made an October Surprise deal with the Iranians, not to make any hostage-releasing deal until after the 1980 elections merely reinforces the point. Reagan's election saw the US enter a post-reality based world, in which it is still entrapped, and Argo may best be viewed, depending on your political perspective, as a reminder of what the real world was like, or, more likely, a reminder that the people who brought you the world of fantasy are the only ones to trust.

Or you might perceive Argo as a 'feel-good' version of Zero Dark Thirty, in which the CIA are heroes and the interrogations are mostly John Goodman's John Chambers torturing Ben Affleck's Tony Mendez with Hollywood insider info. Or you might see it as a positive nod to a can-do America that, despite its thriller-matic finish, is actually accomplished more easily than, say, Lincoln's emancipation of black slaves was via American democratic process.

The movie itself skips between genres cleverly—and is most effective for its reconstruction of the period—not just sets and costumes but also the dirty grainy look of the film itself, which is pure 70s, and encourages the audience old enough to remember films you didn't download to transport itself back to the days of those sorts of political thrillers. In fact, there are shots of Mendez in the CIA HQ which straightforwardly evoke All The President's Men, in case you're old enough and missed the point. Ben Affleck doesn't ignore facts—the CIA's role in installing the Shah as dictator is set out right at the top—but the trope is an old one of maverick within a flawed system who eventually gets that system to do the right thing. In this contxt, Affleck the director is very good with actors in ensemble roles, much like Clint Eastwood. Affleck's ensemble contains many faces in familiar roles, faces who espcially shone in such parts on quality TV: Titus Welliver, Zeljko Ivanek , Clea DuVall (Carnivale), Tate Donovan, and Kyle Chandler (as Hamilton Jordan). Less like Clint is also good at minimising his own part, which is good because Ben Affleck the actor still has limitations when it comes to carrying a film—I think he works best as a straight man. I still believe George Reeves was Affleck's best role, and that may be at least partly because he sensed a kindred talent.

There were, however, moments that left me feeling uneasy, that I was being manipulated, particularly in the rousing end sequence at Tehran airport. It struck me as odd that the children would have put together the right photo at just the wrong time; that the guards would chase a Swiss Air commercial flight down the runaway, firing at it; that the pilot would not notice any of that, and that the tower would not simply stop the plane's takeoff, if they thought spies were escaping. As it happens, none of those things are true: the departure from the airport went off without a hitch (for reasons described below). But you couldn't have the suspense without tampering with the facts. I was even more sceptical of the guard making a phone call to the film's production office in LA, for two reasons: one being long-distance calling and time zones, and the other being why would a Canadian film crew not have a Canadian office number, and why would a phone number in the Babylon of America not arouse suspicion?

There has been a lot of discussion in this year's Oscar run-up about historical fact—what with Zero Dark Thirty trying to have it both ways about torture, and Lincoln being accused of being Caucacentric, and also gilding the lily of remembrance by anointing its hero prematurely, or Django inventing sunglasses and a pre-Civil War Ku Klux Klan. Much of the criticism is unjustified, in the sense that film scripts will inevitable consolidate multiple characters and re-order events to serve their own purpose. Thus, the fact that most of the hostages stayed not with the Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor (played very well by the Candian actor Victor Garber) but with one of his assistants, John Shearwood, is hardly crucial; it makes dramatic sense to keep them all together. The scene in which the Brits and Kiwis turn the refugees away is also apparently false: the Brits took them in and Kiwis transferred them to the Canadians, where it was thought they would fit in more naturally and be safer. The jibe,if gratuitous, does serve to emphasize the plight of the Americans, and obviously the Bafta voters didn't hold it against Argo.

But it should be pointed out that the Canadians did far more than simply sit back and wait for the CIA cavalry to arrive (shades of Independence Day!). In fact, Ambassador Taylor manipulated his staff's travel to help create the necessary visas, and it was the Canadians who got the airplane tickets—thus the whole cancellation and restoration by the CIA sub-plot is fiction.

I was also put off a bit by the separated husband/lonely father sub-plot for Tony Mendez; Affleck plays it with suitable moroseness, but as it turns out, it too is a fictional construct. The reason for it is obvious and familiar—Mendez not only has to redeem himself at the CIA but he has to conquer personal adversity along the way; this is the arc that dominates Hollywood—though they just couldn't figure out a way to have Abe Lincoln reunited with Mary Todd at movie's end.

Complaining that Alan Arkin's Lester Siegel didn't really exist would be silly—they need him to carry those sections, and his double-act with Goodman is one of the high points of the film. In reality, another special-effects genius, Robert Siddel, who did ET, was announced as the co-producer with Chambers when the ads went into the trades. Interesting, the original screenplay was based on Roger Zelazny's Lord Of Light, one of the key sf novels of the Sixties, and the film was intended for use in an sf theme park that never happened. Michael Parks has a cameo as comics genius Jack Kirby, who actually did draw the storyboards for the fake film, which also had Ray Harryhausen and Buckminster Fuller attached to it (!). Which ought to be enough to get Lord Of Light made, after all these years. I'm sure they could get Lester Siegel to produce. He could make the 'argo fuck yourself' joke another twenty times, and get a laugh every time.