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      ‘All the Light We Cannot See’ Casts Blind Actresses

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      In a new Netflix mini-series, the two actresses playing the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel’s protagonist, are blind, just like the character.On a set on the outskirts of Budapest, as the crew reset cameras for the next take, Nell Sutton, 7, sat up in bed and asked her director, Shawn Levy, a question:“How will you make it look like night?”Levy explained that the blue lights, set up around the room, would convey nighttime onscreen. Sutton was satisfied, and settled back into position, headphones on, to start a scene in which her character, Marie-Laure, is listening to the radio way past her bedtime. Her father, played by Mark Ruffalo, comes in and catches her. She tells him that she is learning about the magic of radio waves. “The most important light is the light you cannot see,” she says.Sutton, cast as the young Marie-Laure in “All the Light We Cannot See,” Netflix’s four-episode adaptation of Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, is blind. The actress playing the character 10 years later, Aria Mia Loberti, is also blind.In some ways the set, which took over a site next to an abandoned brewery last year for a few weeks over the summer, seemed like any other: People with walkie-talkies strode past equipment and craft services. But this production was the first time that blind lead characters in a major television show were being played by actors who were themselves blind, and the attention that went into accommodating those actors, and making the show as true as possible to the experiences of people who are blind, was significant.In the show, Daniel (Mark Ruffalo) catches his young daughter Marie-Laure (Nell Sutton) up past her bedtime listening to the radio.Atsushi Nishijima/Netflix“All the Light We Cannot See” is set in occupied France during World War II and follows Marie-Laure, an amateur radio enthusiast and the daughter of a master locksmith at Paris’s Museum of Natural History, and Werner (Louis Hofmann), a young German radio engineer who is drafted into a Nazi Wehrmacht squad to trace a radio signal that is broadcasting resistance messages. Marie-Laure is behind the signal, which she sends from Saint-Malo, a town on the northern coast of France, where she and her father moved while Paris was occupied.The book’s title refers to radio signals, and its protagonist’s sightlessness, but also to moral blindness, Doerr said in an interview on set. “In many ways, Marie-Laure is a much more capable-sighted character than Werner for much of the book,” he added.The adaptation was directed and produced by Levy (“Stranger Things”), and co-produced by Dan Levine (“Arrival.”) When the book came out in 2014, the producer Scott Rudin snapped up the adaptation rights to develop a feature film. Years later, when Levy learned that Rudin intended to let the rights lapse, he approached Doerr and proposed making a limited TV series instead. “That was much more exciting to me,” Doerr said. “The novel is like 500 pages; it would be hard to go for 120 minutes.”Levy said that he and Levine agreed early on that Marie-Laure, both as a child and as an adult, should be played by blind actors. It was a risk for several reasons, Levine said, not least because studios like to cast big names in lead roles. The show has big names — Ruffalo as Marie-Laure’s father, and Hugh Laurie as her uncle, Etienne — but the actors playing Marie-Laure would have to be unknowns.The director Shawn Levy, right, approached Anthony Doerr, left, to adapt Doerr’s 2014 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel into a limited series.Chloe Ellingson for The New York TimesThe bigger issue was how to find them, since there are very few working blind actors. The producers and the casting directors did a global, open casting call, contacting schools and communities for the blind. “I thought, once we go down this road, we can’t go back,” Levine said. “We couldn’t say, ‘Well, we can’t find anyone.’”First, they cast Sutton, who was from a small town in Wales and who had starred in a campaign for a British charity, but had no other acting experience. Finding the older Marie-Laure took more time, and the production team saw hundreds of auditions before a tape from Loberti, a Ph.D. student at Penn State University who had no acting experience at all.The production’s secret weapon, Levy said, was their blindness consultant, Joe Strechay. Strechay has been legally blind since he was 19, and described himself in an interview in his trailer as now being “totally blind.” He previously worked with Netflix on the “Daredevil” series, and with Steven Knight, the writer of “All the Light,” on the Apple TV+ series “See.” “Having a lead character played by a person who’s legally blind, this is what we’ve been working for for a long time,” Strechay said.Strechay consulted on all of the adjustments the production made to the set, including adding tactile marks to the floor that Loberti and Sutton could feel to establish their positioning, giving the actors time on set ahead of shooting to acclimate, and writing the series title in Braille on the directors’ chairs and trailers.Joe Strechay worked as the blindness consultant on set, helping to make it accessible to the blind actors. Atsushi Nishijima/NetflixHe was also involved in a directorial capacity. Strechay watched all of the rushes with his seeing assistant, Cara Lee Hrdlitschka, who described the scenes to him in minute detail so that he could give feedback on how Marie-Laure’s blindness was being conveyed onscreen. “If someone who’s blind or low-vision does something over and over again, it becomes easy,” Strechay said. “So if it’s supposed to be them arriving in a place they’ve never been before, we look at all those little movements to make sure they’re accurate for that moment, for that character, in the story.”This led to frequent alterations, including to a scene in which Daniel teaches young Marie-Laure how to use a cane while walking down a busy street. Levine thought Daniel ought to be standing next to the curb, for Marie-Laure’s safety, but on set Strechay corrected him. Daniel would want it the other way around, he said, so Marie-Laure could orient herself by the sound of the traffic and feel the curb with her cane.These details mattered to Strechay, he said, because he has been generally unimpressed by media representations of blind people. Ruffalo played a blind person in the 2008 film “Blindness,” and remembered mentioning this to Strechay when they first met. “He said, ‘Oh yeah, I saw that. Nice try,’” Ruffalo said in an interview between takes.Sutton and Ruffalo in a scene from the show. Sutton, who is from a small town in Wales, had starred in a campaign for a British charity before the show, but had no other acting experience. Atsushi Nishijima/Netflix, via Associated PressStrechay has also helped the sighted actors understand how to interact with a blind person respectfully. In the scene in which Marie-Laure listens to late-night radio, Ruffalo, as Daniel, removed a pair of headphones from Sutton’s ears. Because of the headphones, she couldn’t hear Ruffalo when he entered the room.“I know not to startle her, to just give her a little touch to tell her I’m there,” he said, adding that onscreen, Daniel alerting Marie-Laure to his presence this way is also more authentic to the relationship between a blind child and her father. “It was important to me that we approach it this way,” Levy said, not only because it seemed right, but because it ultimately made for a better show.Working on this production has made the producers think differently about the primacy of sight in their work. One of the novel’s strengths is how it immerses the reader in Marie-Laure’s experience of the world: through smell, sound and touch. TV is a visual medium, but there are ways it can bring those other senses to the fore.“It’s so easy as a director to get image obsessed, shot by shot,” Levy said. “And there’s still that, because this is ultimately a television series that people will watch. Creating beautiful images is important to me, but my awareness of the tools that I have as a director is more 360.”He gave the example of the objects Marie-Laure has on her bedroom windowsill. “They wouldn’t be items chosen for prettiness, they’d be chosen for the sound they make in a breeze, or the texture against the fingertips,” Levy said. In several episodes, shots of Marie-Laure focus on her feet — walking over broken glass, navigating the streets of Saint-Malo with her cane — and so heightening the viewer’s sense of how she perceives the world through senses other than sight.Strechay said he hoped Sutton’s and Loberti’s performances would open the door for more blind actors. Sutton shared this hope, she said in an interview on set, adding that she was excited for other blind children to watch the series.“Sometimes I say your gift is your blindness,” she said. “And I say, even if you’re blind, you can still do anything.” More

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      Late Night Wastes No Time Jumping on Jim Jordan’s Troubles

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      The guest host of “The Daily Show,” Michael Kosta, likened Congress to Mitch McConnell on Tuesday: “totally frozen, and no one knows how to fix it.”Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Only 14 More Rounds to GoJim Jordan lost a vote to be elected speaker of the House on Tuesday, with 20 Republicans withholding support from the ultraconservative representative from Ohio.With Jordan struggling in the face of unyielding opposition, a second vote was delayed. The guest host of “The Daily Show,” Michael Kosta, likened Congress to Mitch McConnell: “totally frozen, and no one knows how to fix it.”“During the first ballot in today’s House speakership vote, Ohio congressman Jim Jordan fell short of the 217 votes necessary to become speaker, but Republicans are determined to keep trying until they finally get it wrong.” — SETH MEYERS“Insiders are saying that one of Jordan’s biggest hurdles is that no one likes him.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“They did this once before with Kevin McCarthy, where it took 15 votes to get elected — so only 14 more rounds to go.” — JIMMY FALLON“You can tell after the first vote that Jordan was getting desperate, because he changed his name from Jim to ‘Michael B.,’ and it didn’t help.” — JIMMY FALLON, referring to Michael B. Jordan, the actor“They haven’t had a speaker for two weeks; there’s no end in sight. Maybe it’s time we take away their right to choose.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Danger Zone Edition)“President Biden is headed to Israel tomorrow, which, wasn’t sending an 80-year-old on a dangerous mission across the globe the plot of the last Indiana Jones movie? And I’m not sure that went great.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“President Biden is facing this issue head-on and going straight into a war zone. He is flying to Israel tonight, although, he is 80 years old, so he did get to the airport two days ago.” — MICHAEL KOSTA“I am proud of Biden for putting himself in harm’s way. Although, let’s be honest, Biden doing anything pretty much puts him in harm’s way. A rocket strike is dangerous, but so’s a bicycle.” — MICHAEL KOSTA“I bet he can cool things down there because if there is one thing Biden is good at, it’s cooling things down, whether it is a war, heated rhetoric or voter enthusiasm.” — MICHAEL KOSTAThe Bits Worth WatchingSeth Meyers delivered his lost “Ya Burnt” segment, which had been scheduled to air the night after the writers’ strike kicked off in May.What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightIssa Rae, the star of the film “American Fiction,” will appear on Wednesday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This Out“I never thought I would get here,” Cher said of this stage of her career. “While I was busy being Cher, how did this happen? No one’s given me any info.”Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesCher’s new holiday album, “Christmas,” includes a re-up of “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” featuring Darlene Love — whose classic 1963 version of the song featured a then-17-year-old Cher on backup vocals. More

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      Jimmy Kimmel Wants to Be Included in Trump’s Gag Order

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      “I don’t know about you — I saw the whole thing happen,” Kimmel said Monday, wondering who counted as a witness in Trump’s election interference case.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Trump Gets GaggedA judge imposed a limited gag order on former President Donald Trump on Monday, barring him from publicly attacking court staff members, specific prosecutors and witnesses involved in the federal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.Jimmy Kimmel wondered who exactly counted as a witness, telling viewers, “I don’t know about you — I saw the whole thing happen.”“Trump’s lawyer said he had no intention of intimidating any witnesses or court staff, including the judge, Tanya Chutkan, the one who lives at 2747 Maple View Lane, white Nissan Sentra parked outside.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“That’s right, Trump is prohibited from posting statements about the special counsel, his staff, the judge’s staff, witnesses and, here’s where it gets worse for him: windmills, windmills killing birds, windmills killing whales, windmills killing birds that come back to life and kill whales, toilets, toilets that don’t flush, toilets that do flush, and toilets that flush louder than windmills killing killer whales that come back to life to kill birds.” — SETH MEYERS“Good luck getting Donald Trump to stop talking. The guy is probably still spilling national secrets, just out on the golf course like, [imitating Trump] ‘Should I go with a 4-iron or a 5-iron? That reminds me, four and five — first two numbers in the nuclear codes. And guess what numbers come next? You’ll never guess; I’ll just tell you.’” — MICHAEL KOSTA“But even with this gag order, Trump’s still allowed to disparage the Justice Department, President Biden and other perceived enemies as long as what he says doesn’t directly reference his case, which, that should be no problem. This is a man who chooses his words very carefully.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Speak For Yourself Edition)“Jim Jordan has been in Congress for 16 years. He hasn’t sponsored a single bill that passed. For real — zero bills passed in 16. Even George Santos is like, ‘You suck, man.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“But these Republicans are in a tough spot. I mean, either they cave to the extremists in their party who want to impeach Joe Biden and hand Ukraine over to Putin, or they work with the Democrats who want to fight climate change and give sick people health care. So it’s a no-win situation, really. “ — JIMMY KIMMEL“You could not pick a worse man for speaker of the House, and keep in mind the G.O.P. just had Kevin McCarthy, so they tried.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Now, Republicans and Democrats are talking about a bipartisan solution to finding a speaker. That’s how crazy things have gotten; our government is so dysfunctional, it might become functional.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingUma Thurman and Jimmy Fallon compared notes about parenting daughters on Monday’s “The Tonight Show.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightRachel Maddow will discuss her new book, “Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism,” on Tuesday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutMadonna performing in London on Saturday, her first time on the road since 2020.Kevin Mazur/WireImage for Live NationMadonna’s career-spanning Celebration Tour is a bona fide dance party to the pop icon’s biggest hits. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘aka Mr. Chow’ and Some Spooky Movies

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      A new HBO documentary film premieres about a restaurateur who is also an artist. A couple of scary movies will get you into the Halloween spirit.With network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Oct. 16-Oct. 22. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE AMERICAN BUFFALO 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Ken Burns is back with another documentary — this time, it’s a two-part series on buffaloes and their evolution, reaching back to the early 1800s. Stories from Indigenous people frame the film with accounts of the mutually beneficial relationship their communities had with the animals.FBOY ISLAND 8 p.m. on The CW. Katie Thurston might not have found love during her stint as “The Bachelorette,” but she’ll get another shot on this new reality series. Thurston will be joined by the model Hali Okeowo, and the influencer Daniella Grace as they date 25 men — some of whom are nice guys. It is not entirely clear how someone wins the cash prize on this show (which asks the eternal question: Is it better to be a nice guy or the wilder kind?), but there is no doubt that it’ll be as messy as a car crash you cannot look away from.TuesdayA still from “Navajo Police: Class 57.”Courtesy of HBONAVAJO POLICE: CLASS 57 9 p.m. on HBO. Though being a recruit for the Navajo Nation Police Department doesn’t seem like it would be too different than trying to make the cut in any other department, these law enforcement hopefuls have to contend with rising crime levels and the particular threats that their communities face. This three-part docu-series follows the candidates as they work their way through the Navajo Police Training Academy in Arizona.WednesdayTHE CHALLENGE: BATTLE FOR A NEW CHAMPION 8 p.m. on MTV. Like the original version of the show, this special iteration features a group of reality stars who all formerly appeared on other shows, including “Love Island,” “Big Brother” and “Are You the One?” The twist here is that the contestants not only will be pitted against one another, but they will also compete with a rotating group of former champions of the show in physical challenges for a cash prize and the title.ThursdayHeather O’Rourke’s character, Carol Anne, becomes the target of spirits in “Poltergeist.”MGMPOLTERGEIST (1982) 10 p.m. on AMC. It’s all fun and games when ghosts commune with a Southern California-based family through their television set — until the spirits turn menacing. This story follows Steve (Craig T. Nelson) and Diane (JoBeth Williams) as they consult with a parapsychologist and an exorcist after their daughter Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke) goes missing amid spooky and creepy happenings around their house.FridayPRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES (2016) 9:45 p.m. on Syfy. Though in my head Mr. Darcy will always be tall, dark and handsome (see Colin Firth or Matthew Macfadyen in the role) and silently brooding in various corners — if you love all things supernatural, maybe you would prefer a Mr. Darcy who, along with his other attributes, is an exceptionally skilled zombie-slayer. The title of this movie really says it all: The unmarried Bennet sisters seek out eligible bachelors while simultaneously trying to stay safe amid a growing zombie population. While Elizabeth Bennet is attracted to Mr. Darcy in the Jane Austen book because of his love for her, in this film, she is drawn to his zombie-killing skills.THE UNINVITED (1944) 11:45 p.m. on TCM. This film, staring Ray Milland (Rick) and Ruth Hussey (Pamela), is a classic ghost story. Rick and his sister Pamela decide to buy an abandoned 18th-century house. The owner associates the house with the death of his daughter and sells it over his granddaughter’s objections. Once Rick and Pamela move in, they have to contend with some not-so-happy ghosts. It is “as solemnly intent on raising goose flesh as any ghost story weirdly told to a group of shivering youngsters around a campfire on a dark and windy night,” Bosley Crowther wrote in his review for The New York Times. “All of the old standbys are in it — flickering candles, the slowly opening door, supernatural agitations and a scent of mimosa now and then.”SaturdayAndy Samberg and Selena Gomez voice Jonathan and Mavis in “Hotel Transylvania.”Columbia PicturesHOTEL TRANSYLVANIA (2012) 7:15 p.m. on Freeform. If two nights straight of scary movies has your fight-or-flight response working overtime, this cute, animated take on a spooky movie could give your nervous system a break. Count Dracula (Adam Sandler) owns a hotel where monsters go when they want to relax. On this particular weekend, Dracula plans a party to celebrate the 118th birthday of his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez). Things go awry when a human (Andy Samberg) accidentally crashes the party and subsequently falls in love with Mavis, who is a vampire.SundayAKA MR. CHOW 9 p.m. on HBO. It’s impossible to deny that Michael Chow has had an interesting life: born in Shanghai, Chow moved to London, where he opened a Chinese restaurant with Italian waiters that catered to British diners. His restaurant, Mr. Chow, now has locations in New York, Miami, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. This documentary film focuses on his life and his recently revealed other identity as an artist who goes by the name “M.” More

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      Suzanne Somers, Star of ‘Three’s Company,’ Is Dead at 76

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      She became famous for playing, as she put it, “one of the best dumb blondes that’s ever been done,” then became a sex-positive health and diet mogul.Suzanne Somers, who gained fame by playing a ditsy blonde on the sitcom “Three’s Company” and then later built a health and diet business empire, most notably with the ThighMaster, died on Sunday at her home in Palm Springs, Calif. She was one day away from turning 77.The cause was breast cancer, Caroline Somers, her daughter-in-law, said.“Three’s Company” first went on the air in 1977. The show told the story of two roommates — Chrissy Snow, a secretary, played by Ms. Somers; and Janet Wood, a florist, played by Joyce DeWitt — who welomed a man to join them as a third roommate: Jack Tripper, a culinary student played by John Ritter. Since their landlord would frown on an unmarried man living with two single women, the group pretended that Jack was gay.High jinks ensued. The show featured slapstick comedy, lighthearted misunderstandings and jokey one-liners.By the show’s fifth season, “Three’s Company” was one of the nation’s most popular sitcoms. Ms. Somers’s acrimonious contract negotiations with ABC became news. In 1982, The Times reported that she had wanted a raise to $50,000 from $30,000 an episode. In recent years, Ms. Somers repeatedly said that she had sought $150,000, in line with Mr. Ritter’s pay.She did not get the pay increase. Instead, she was fired.“I’ve been playing what I think is one of the best dumb blondes that’s ever been done, but I never got any credit,” she told The Times that year. “I did it so well that everyone thought I really was a dumb blonde.”Ms. Somers’s first notable role came in the 1973 film “American Graffiti.” She appeared only briefly, mouthing “I love you” to one of the stars, Richard Dreyfuss; the credits listed her as “Blonde in T-Bird.”But that scene was beguiling enough to earn her a spot on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson, who, Ms. Somers recalled earlier this year in an interview with Page Six, introduced her as “the mysterious blonde in the Thunderbird from ‘American Graffiti.’”Ms. Somers in New York in 2020. After leaving “Three’s Company,” she appeared in many other television shows, including “Step by Step.”Mark Sommerfeld for The New York TimesAppearing on “The Tonight Show,” she said, got her the audition for “Three’s Company.”In the years after “Three’s Company,” Ms. Somers remained recognizable for frequent appearances in movies and on television, including the 1990s sitcom “Step by Step,” a stint co-hosting the television series “Candid Camera” and a wide variety of talk shows.But her later reputation sprang from her business acumen — which proved to be more formidable than ABC’s executives appreciated in 1980.She and her husband, Alan Hamel, made the ThighMaster, a workout device, one of the most recognizable products in infomercial history, thanks in part to Ms. Somers’s many leggy appearances alongside the product. The ads showcased her beauty and her advice that is “it’s easy to squeeze, squeeze your way to shapely hips and thighs.”More than 10 million units of the ThighMaster have been sold over the years at an average price of about $30, Caroline Somers said. She is not only Ms. Somers’s daughter-in-law but also the president of her mother-in-law’s company, which owns the ThighMaster and has overseen Ms. Somers’s other business and entertainment activities.In the mid-2000s, Ms. Somers was appearing on the Home Shopping Network for more than 25 hours every month. She was the pitchperson for everything from cowboy boots to waffle irons.Ms. Somers also wrote more than 27 books, including 14 best sellers, which tended to focus on issues related to the body and aging.Some of the methods she promoted — particularly bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, a treatment that she called “the juice of youth” for menopausal women — have often been criticized by doctors as unproven and possibly unsafe, even as the market for them has grown.The foundation of her business efforts was the sex positivity that she had embodied since “Three’s Company.”“A sexual person,” she told The Times for a profile in 2020, “is a healthy person.”Suzanne Marie Mahoney was born on Oct. 16, 1946, in San Bruno, Calif. Her father, Francis, had some success as an athlete but not enough for a lasting career, and he spent much of Suzanne’s youth working at a brewery. Her mother, Marion (Turner) Mahoney, was a medical secretary.Suzanne Mahoney was kicked out of a Catholic high school when nuns discovered love letters she had written. She graduated from Capuchino High School, a public high school, in San Bruno.She attended Lone Mountain College (which later became part of the University of San Francisco), but she dropped out after she discovered in 1965 that she was pregnant, and she married the baby’s father, Bruce Somers.They divorced in the late 1960s. Not long afterward, she worked as a prize model on a game show hosted by Alan Hamel, a frequent TV host. They quickly began dating and married in 1977.In addition to Caroline Somers and Mr. Hamel, Ms. Somers is survived by Bruce Somers, her son from her first marriage; two stepchildren, Stephen and Leslie Hamel; two siblings, Maureen Gilmartin and Dan Mahoney; two granddaughters; and four step-grandchildren.Ms. Somers was first diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer more than 20 years ago. She pivoted from selling mainly jewelry, apparel and weight loss and diet products to focusing on organic skin care and cleaning goods, along with her promotion of hormones.She managed to sustain an energetic calendar of live performances. An autobiographical show on Broadway, “The Blonde in the Thunderbird,” was critically panned and closed after only 15 performances, but she had better luck in Las Vegas, where she enjoyed many years of song-and-dance gigs, featuring flamboyant costumes and no small amount of glitter.At the time of her Times profile in 2020, Ms. Somers had recently fallen from the private tram on her 93-acre compound in Palm Springs while partying with friends. Yet a reporter observed her at a spa in New York City managing the feat of walking with “a vampy strut” even while using crutches. More

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      Phyllis Coates, the First Lois Lane on TV’s ‘Superman,’ Dies at 96

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      She replaced Noel Neill, who had played Lois in two Superman movie serials; Ms. Neill in turn replaced her after one season.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 “Adventures of Superman” television series, died on Wednesday in Woodland Hills, Calif. She was 96.Her daughter Laura Press confirmed the death, at the Motion Picture & Television Fund’s retirement community.Ms. Coates was a busy if not well-known actress when she became the second onscreen Lois. Noel Neill had played the role in two 15-part movie serials, “Superman” (1948) and “Atom Man vs. Superman” (1950), in which Kirk Alyn played the Man of Steel.“But when there were talks about making a theatrical film — which would become ‘Superman and the Mole Men’ — Kirk Alyn didn’t want to do the role anymore,” Larry T. Ward, the author of “Truth, Justice & the American Way,” a biography of Ms. Neill, said in a phone interview. “He felt he had been typecast. So rather than just replacing Superman, they replaced the entire cast.”In “Mole Men” (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.The “Adventures of Superman” 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’s cantankerous top editor.Ms. Coates’s 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’s building by a man who had strapped dynamite to himself, and captured by thugs smuggling fugitives into Canada.The series was not lavishly produced, as was evident in the characters’ wardrobes, which rarely changed.“Oh boy — I had one suit! One suit, and a double in case I got egg on it!” Ms. Coates told The Los Angeles Times in 1994 when she was cast as the mother of another Lois, Teri Hatcher, in an episode of “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.” “George’s dresser dressed me. My makeup man was Harry Thomas, who made up every monster in Hollywood.”In a statement, Ms. Hatcher said, “I’m sure she was aware of how much the fans would enjoy that inside nod to her work on the original TV series.”Ms. Coates stayed through the show’s first season but did not return in the fall of 1953, Mr. Ward said, because she had a commitment to film a pilot, which was ultimately not picked up as a series.In the book “Science Fiction Stars and Horror Heroes” (2006), by Tom Weaver, Ms. Coates was quoted as saying that the producer of “Adventures of Superman,” Whitney Ellsworth, offered her “about four or five times what I was getting if I’d come back, but that she “really wanted to get out of ‘Superman.’”Ms. Press said that difficult working conditions and a desire to play other roles led Ms. Coates to leave the series.Re-enter Ms. Neill, who played Lois until the series ended in 1958.Mr. Reeves died of a gunshot wound a year later. The death was ruled a suicide.Ms. Coates “got a lot of fan mail,” her daughter said, “most of it for ‘Superman,’ but also for the westerns she did with Whip Wilson and Johnny Mack Brown.”Everett CollectionPhyllis Coates was born Gypsie Ann Stell on Jan. 15, 1927, in Wichita Falls, Texas, to William Stell, known as Rush, and Jackie Evarts. After graduating from high school, Gypsie moved to Los Angeles, where she was a chorus girl in shows produced by Earl Carroll and acted in sketches in a variety revue. She also performed on a European U.S.O. tour. In 1948, she signed a contract with Warner Bros.Ms. Coates’s credits include Alice McDoakes, the wife of Joe McDoakes (played by George O’Hanlon), in a long-running series of comedy shorts, with names like “So You Want to Be a Baby Sitter” and “So You Want to Get Rich Quick,” between 1948 and 1956. She was also the star of a serial, “Panther Girl of the Kongo” (1955), in which she rode an elephant; a guest star on episodes of TV series like “Gunsmoke,” “Rawhide” and “Perry Mason,” as well as “Leave It to Beaver,” which was directed by Norman Tokar, her husband at the time.“She got a lot of fan mail, most of it for ‘Superman,’ but also for the westerns she did with Whip Wilson and Johnny Mack Brown,” Ms. Press said.In addition to Ms. Press, Ms. Coates is survived by another daughter, Zoe Christopher, and a granddaughter. Her marriages to Richard Bare (who directed the McDoakes shorts), Robert Nelms, Mr. Tokar and Howard Press all ended in divorce. A son, David Tokar, died in 2011.In 1953, while she was still portraying Lois Lane, Ms. Coates told The Los Angeles Times that her 4-year-old daughter questioned (as many fans did) why Superman’s Clark Kent disguise fooled people, even though it was just a pair of glasses, a hat and a suit over his Superman outfit.Her daughter, Ms. Coates said, “just can’t understand why I can’t see through Superman’s disguise in the telecasts. She thinks I’m quite stupid about the whole thing.” More

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      Piper Laurie, Reluctant Starlet Turned Respected Actress, Dies at 91

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      She began as just another product of the studio system, but she went on to receive three Oscar nominations, win an Emmy and appear on Broadway.Piper Laurie, who escaped the 1950s Hollywood starlet-making machinery to become a respected actress with three Oscar nominations and an Emmy Award, died on Saturday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 91.Her manager, Marion Rosenberg, confirmed the death, The Associated Press reported.Ms. Laurie’s first Academy Award nomination was for best actress in “The Hustler” (1961), in which she played a lonely alcoholic who hooks up with a dissolute pool player played by Paul Newman. After a 15-year break from making movies, she earned a comeback nomination for her performance as the deranged religious mother of a telekinetic teenager (Sissy Spacek) in “Carrie” (1976). She received her third nomination for her role as the estranged mother of a young deaf woman (Marlee Matlin) in “Children of a Lesser God” (1986).Piper Laurie with Paul Newman in a scene from “The Hustler” in 1961. Her role in the film as a lonely alcoholic brought her an Oscar nomination as best actress.Silver Screen Collection/Getty ImagesJust before that, she had won an Emmy for “Promise” (1986), an acclaimed CBS movie about schizophrenia in which she played James Garner’s helpful ex-girlfriend. She received eight other Emmy nominations, including for her roles as the vengeful paper-mill manager on the original “Twin Peaks,” Rachel Ward’s sympathetic married friend in “The Thorn Birds” and the comically vicious mother of a coldhearted psychiatrist on the NBC sitcom “Frasier.”Ms. Laurie, whose birth name was Rosetta Jacobs, was 17 when Universal-International signed her as a contract player and gave her the screen name Piper Laurie — a change about which she had mixed feelings. It was the era of publicity gimmicks, an attempt to brand new performers, especially starlets, with fabricated, sometimes outrageous histories or habits. The studio was looking for an angle that had not been used before. A publicist on the set of a movie she was shooting observed a scene that involved putting flowers in a salad. The publicist decided to position her as the girl who ate flowers — orchids, rose petals, marigolds. And so she did, dutifully, for photographs and interviews. (“They didn’t taste so bad,” she told a United Press International reporter in 1991.)Publicity tours and stunts were so much a part of her career that in 1953, Collier’s magazine ran an article about how many she did — happily, the writer observed — and how much money her pictures were making for her employer.Behind her smile, however, Ms. Laurie was growing disillusioned.“Every role I played was the same girl, no matter whether my co-star was Rock Hudson or Tony Curtis or Rory Calhoun,” she told The New York Times in 1977, referring to the movies she had made while under contract with Universal. “She was innocent, sexual, simple — the less intelligent, the better, and complexity was forbidden.” She rebelled and broke her contract in 1956.As early as 1959, Ms. Laurie was brazenly frank in interviews about her experience. In one, published in The Tribune of Columbus in Indiana, she said, “If I’d continued in Hollywood, doing those old, insipid parts, I think by now I would have killed myself.”Piper Laurie in the movie “Carrie” in 1976 playing the deranged religious mother of a telekinetic teenager.United Artists/Archive Photos, via Getty ImagesShe decided to hold out for better movie roles, doing television and stage work for four years or so until eventually the right thing came along: “The Hustler.”Rosetta Jacobs was born in Detroit on Jan. 22, 1932, the younger of two daughters of Alfred Jacobs, a furniture dealer, and Charlotte Sadie (Alperin) Jacobs. Her grandparents were Jewish immigrants, from Poland on her father’s side and from Russia on her mother’s.When Rosetta was 6, she was sent to accompany her older sister, who was asthmatic, to a sanitarium in Southern California. Ms. Laurie wrote in her 2011 memoir, “Learning to Live Out Loud,” that she never understood why she had to go too. Her parents told her it was to “keep your sister company,” but in hindsight, she wrote, “They must have been suffering in ways they believed we couldn’t understand” and just couldn’t deal with parenthood at the time. Three years later, their parents moved to Los Angeles and had them released.Although Ms. Laurie hated those years in the sanitarium, she eventually saw them as having benefited her. “My exile had cultivated an imagination that grew like a giant, sheltering flower,” she wrote in her memoir. “It was a lifetime gift.”Rosetta was unusually anxious about public speaking, so she was given elocution lessons. Those led to small acting roles, and with her mother’s encouragement she found a part in a play presented by a low-profile theater company in Los Angeles, won a screen test in a local contest (but did badly on the test itself), took part in comedy sketches at a resort and eventually found an agent. She and another newcomer, Rock Hudson, signed seven-year movie contracts on the same day.Piper Laurie and Ronald Reagan at a Hollywood party in 1950. They dated for a time. Associated Press/Associated PressUniversal cast her in “Louisa” (1950), a romantic comedy in which she played Ronald Reagan’s teenage daughter. (They dated after filming was over.) Over the next four years, she appeared in a dozen films, including “The Prince Who Was a Thief” (1951), “Son of Ali Baba” (1952), “The Mississippi Gambler” (1953) and “Francis Goes to the Races” (1951), in which one co-star was a talking mule.After moving to New York in the mid-1950s, Ms. Laurie acted in Off Broadway stage productions and television dramas. But she did not make her Broadway debut until 1965, when she starred as the fragile teenage heroine, Laura, in a revival of Tennessee Williams’s “The Glass Menagerie,” with Maureen Stapleton and Pat Hingle. She returned to Broadway only once, in 2002, as part of the ensemble cast of “Morning’s at Seven.”Her later film career included “Tim” (1979), in which she played an older woman who has a relationship with a younger man who is mentally disabled (Mel Gibson, then 23, in one of his first films); Sean Penn’s drama “The Crossing Guard” (1995), starring Jack Nicholson; and “The Grass Harp” (1995), based on a Truman Capote novel.She also appeared in two horror movies, “The Faculty” (1998) and “Bad Blood” (2012); in both, she played a cult matriarch. In 2018, she appeared in two movies: “Snapshots,” a drama in which she played a grandmother with a secret past, and “White Boy Rick,” a crime drama starring Matthew McConaughey.Ms. Laurie had a long romantic relationship with the director John Frankenheimer, who directed her in the original live television version of “Days of Wine and Roses” in New York, but they never married. While promoting “The Hustler,” Ms. Laurie was interviewed by Joe Morgenstern, then an entertainment reporter for The New York Herald Tribune and later a film critic for Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal. They began dating and married in 1962.Piper Laurie and Joe Morgenstern, then an entertainment reporter, at his desk at The Herald Tribune in New York shortly after their engagement in 1961.John Lent/Associated PressThey stayed together for two decades and lived in Woodstock, in upstate New York, for much of that time. She did a handful of guest roles on television in the first years of their marriage, then disappeared from the screen altogether in 1966 until “Carrie” — which she originally thought was meant to be a comedy — came along a decade later. In between, she focused on her marriage; sculpture, which she studied at the Art Students League in New York; and a new daughter, Anna.“Being a mother and a stone carver really helped me to find my voice,” she told The Hollywood Interview, an entertainment blog, decades later. She and Mr. Morgenstern divorced in 1982. There was no immediate information on her survivors.When asked in a 2011 interview with the Archive of American Television what acting advice she would offer, Ms. Laurie said, “Sometimes I think I don’t know anything.” But she acknowledged that her childhood shyness may have helped her “learn to listen, really, deeply, fully.”Later, she told The Hollywood Interview, she learned the relationship between focus and fear by doing live television. “The moment we went live, suddenly the air changed in the room and I was totally focused,” she recalled. “The panic, the terror, the preference to have a truck hit me was gone.”It was even better than stage acting, she said: “Live TV had the intensity of three or four opening nights on Broadway all smacked together.” More

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      Mark Goddard, a Star of the ’60s Series ‘Lost in Space,’ Dies at 87

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      For three seasons, he and a family of five, a wily (and annoying) saboteur and a talking robot were marooned on a distant planet in the far-off future: 1997.Mark Goddard, the actor best known for playing Maj. Don West on the fanciful and popular 1960s science-fiction series “Lost in Space,” died on Tuesday at a hospice center in Hingham, Mass. He was 87.His son John said the cause was pulmonary fibrosis. Major West was the pilot of a spaceship carrying a family of five, a stowaway and a robot in the far distant future — the year 1997. On their way to help colonize a planet in the Alpha Centauri system, their ship went seriously off course, leaving the cast marooned on a different, inhospitable one (though luckily the atmosphere was suitable for human life).That set the stage for encounters with giant spiders, rock monsters, frog people, cyborg armies, space hippies, alien prisons, intergalactic beauty pageants and titanium shortages.The show — created by Irwin Allen, a producer later known for popular disaster films like “The Towering Inferno” — ran for three seasons (1965-68) on CBS. Major West was theoretically the romantic lead, a handsome single man in a uniform, and the first season hinted at a budding romantic relationship between him and the family’s oldest child, Judy (Marta Kristen). But that subplot soon faded into the background.For various reasons, including being scheduled opposite the new comic-book-like “Batman,” “Lost in Space” changed in the second and third seasons from a science-fiction project to a campy series that was more comedy than adventure.Mr. Goddard’s character no longer found himself setting up force fields, aiming his ray gun at rock-throwing giants, navigating rugged new planetary terrain or fending off kidnappers from another dimension. He was more likely to be left behind analyzing soil samples while Dr. Smith (Jonathan Harris), the saboteur stowaway, little Will (Billy Mumy) and the robot (Bob May, with the voice of Dick Tufeld) were off getting into trouble with a new creature or machine.Mr. Goddard’s co-stars on “Lost in Space” included, from left, Marta Kristen, Billy Mumy and Angela Cartwright.20th Century Fox Film Corp./Everett CollectionThe other regulars in the cast were Guy Williams and June Lockhart as the space-traveling parents and Angela Cartwright as their other daughter.Don was always the character most annoyed by Dr. Smith, and least sympathetic to him. He could be both hot-tempered and coldhearted, but he dutifully took a spacewalk, against his better judgment, to rescue Smith from the clutches of a seductive alien creature. If it had been up to him alone, he admitted, he would have let Dr. Smith drift through space for eternity.Major West was a role Mr. Goddard had taken reluctantly, not being a fan of science fiction. In his 2008 memoir, “To Space and Back,” he referred to his space uniform, his wardrobe for the show, as “silver lamé pajamas and my pretty silver ski boots.”Charles Harvey Goddard was born in Lowell, Mass., on July 24, 1936. He was the youngest of five children of Clarence and Ruth (Delaronde) Goddard. He grew up in nearby Scituate, Mass., where his father owned and managed the local five-and-ten-cent store.Chuck, as he was known at the time, attended Holy Cross College in Worcester, about 70 miles away, with no particular career ambition. He became interested in acting after appearing in one college play, George M. Cohan’s “Seven Keys to Baldpate.” In 1957, in the middle of his junior year, he transferred to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. Two years later, he moved to Los Angeles.He made his screen debut in a 1959 television movie that was meant to be a pilot for “The Joan Crawford Show.” (The series never happened.) He changed his first name to Mark at the suggestion of Chuck Connors, the star of “The Rifleman,” a western series on which Mr. Goddard made a guest appearance — no need to have two Chucks in the show’s credits.After only three weeks in town, Mr. Goddard was cast in a network series. He played Cully, the young deputy sheriff in the short-lived western “Johnny Ringo” (1959-60). A former sharpshooter at a carnival, Cully was brave enough to stand up to armed robbers and bloodthirsty bounty hunters but sensitive enough to be traumatized after killing a man for the first time.“All this time I’ve been handling guns and not knowing what they do,” Cully said after shooting a man dead in a saloon, in self-defense.From left, Mr. Goddard, Robert Taylor and Tige Andrews in a publicity photo for the crime series “The Detectives.” The New York Times described Mr. Goddard’s character as “a brash but efficient young police lieutenant.”Everett CollectionWhen “Johnny Ringo” ended after a year, Mr. Goddard joined the second season of “The Detectives,” a crime drama starring Robert Taylor. Mr. Goddard’s character, Sgt. Chris Ballard, was described by The New York Times as “a brash but efficient young police lieutenant.” “The Detectives” ended its run in 1962. Mr. Goddard’s next series, “Many Happy Returns” (1964-65), a comedy with Elinor Donahue, was also canceled after just a year. Then “Lost in Space” came along.When the show ended in 1968, he had difficulty finding acting jobs. He worked as an actors’ agent for a while, then had the opportunity to make his Broadway debut — in “The Act,” with Liza Minnelli, in 1977. Richard Eder of The Times said the production was “a first-rate cabaret show” but not really theater. It ran for eight months on star power alone.After that, Mr. Goddard appeared in a horror movie, “Blue Sunshine” (1978), and made guest appearances on several series. He entered the world of soap operas in the 1980s, appearing briefly on “One Life to Live” in 1981 and “General Hospital” in 1985 and 1986.Mr. Goddard was married three times. His marriage to Marcia Rogers (1960-68), a press agent at the time, ended in divorce, as did his marriage to the actress Susan Anspach (1970-78). In 1994 he married Evelyn Pezzulich, an English professor, who survives him. In addition to his son John, from that marriage, his survivors include two children from his marriage to Ms. Rogers, Melissa and Michael Goddard; two stepchildren from his marriage to Susan Anspach, Caleb and Catherine Goddard; two sisters, June Merrill and Patricia Panet-Raymond; and several grandchildren.In his 50s, Mr. Goddard went home again. Returning to college after 30 years, he earned a bachelor’s degree in communications and a master’s degree in education from Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts. In 1991, he became a special-education teacher in Middleborough, Mass.Even after he began teaching, he took a screen acting job every now and then. He made a cameo appearance in the movie version of “Lost in Space” (1998) and was seen in the more movie dramas “Overnight Sensation” (2000) and “Soupernatural” (2010). But he no longer thought of himself as an actor.“I had a wonderful life as an actor,” he told The Houston Chronicle in 1997. “But I didn’t want to be sitting around in Hollywood, kind of a halfway celebrity looking for his next job.”Bernard Mokam More