Joan Alexander, R.I.P.

Joan Alexander, the original voice of Lois Lane on radio, has died at the age of 94. That's her in the above photo, posing with Harry Donenfeld (the publisher of the Superman comic books) and Bud Collyer, the radio voice of The Man of Steel. She was best known for that program but she appeared in an awful lot of other programs, and also had a decent career in television. Among her other jobs, she was a panelist on the game show, The Name's The Same, which we've occasionally discussed here.

This obit will tell you a lot more than I can, but it does have one thing wrong. It says she and Collyer did the radio roles in the 17 Superman cartoons produced by Max Fleischer and Famous Studios in the forties. Actually, the last few had very good sound-alikes, not Collyer and Alexander.

One thing in that obit surprised me. It said she had once been married to actor John Sylvester White, who was best known for playing Mr. Woodman, the beleaguered principal on Welcome Back, Kotter. I knew John pretty well when I worked on that show. He was a charming man who talked openly about his past, which included destroying his career for many years at a time via alcohol…but he never mentioned that he was once married to Lois Lane.