Joan Alexander, 94, the voice of Lois Lane in the 1940s radio “Superman” and in an animated television version in the 1960s, died May 21 in New York, according to her daughter, the novelist Jane Stanton Hitchcock.
A native of St. Paul, Minn., Alexander worked as a model before moving to radio serials. She played loyal secretary Della Street in “Perry Mason” and characters on radio soap operas and dramas.
But her most famous role was as the Daily Planet reporter constantly rescued by Superman. Alexander did voice-overs in animated Superman shorts playing in movie theaters during World War II. She also did the voice for a 1960s CBS Saturday morning cartoon, “The New Adventures of Superman.”
Her third husband was Arthur Stanton, an auto distributor who helped introduce the Volkswagen Beetle to America. He died in 1987, leaving her $70 million.
Dr. Henry Lucas, 77, one of the first blacks to serve on the Republican National Committee, died Tuesday in San Francisco after suffering a stroke.
Lucas, a San Francisco Bay-area dentist for five decades, met Ronald Reagan in the mid-1960s when the former actor first ran for California governor. He traveled and campaigned with Reagan and used his clout to mobilize conservative blacks for political action.
In 1980, he and conservative commentator Thomas Sowell organized the Black Alternatives Conference with support from the incoming Reagan White House. Reagan sent his top aide, Ed Meese, to the meeting in San Francisco that drew black professionals and business people.
Lucas believed that it was important to raise the national profile of conservative blacks and provide an alternative to the “old-line black leadership” dominated by liberals.
Shih Kien, 96, a veteran Hong Kong actor who played Bruce Lee’s archrival in the 1973 movie “Enter the Dragon,” died Wednesday at a Hong Kong hospital, the Ming Pao Daily News reported.
Shih made his film debut in 1940 and went on to act in about 350 films, most notably playing villains in films about Chinese folk hero Wong Fei-hong, according to Ming Pao.
He was best known to Western audiences for playing the evil martial arts expert Han in “Enter the Dragon.” In the movie, Lee’s character is hired by a foreign government to infiltrate Han’s island and seeks to avenge his sister’s death by Han’s bodyguard.
David Eddings, 77, a fantasy writer who wrote more than two dozen novels, died Tuesday of natural causes at his Carson City, Nev., home, his family announced.
The Spokane, Wash., native’s novels included the multivolume “Belgariad” and “Malloreon” series. Many were written with his wife Leigh, who died in 2007. His last book was “The Younger Gods,” published in 2006.
