Joan Alexander

Joan Alexander, born Louise Abrass on April 16, 1915, in Saint Paul, Minnesota, was an American actress whose career spanned radio, television, animation, and Broadway. She died on May 21, 2009, at the age of 94 from an intestinal blockage, survived by her son Timothy Stanton, daughter Jane Stanton Hitchcock, and grandsons Liam and Conrad Stanton.

Alexander was born into a Lebanese-American family. Her father died when she was three years old, and after her mother remarried, the family relocated to Brooklyn, New York. She attended a convent school on Long Island. She later pursued modeling and acting, and studied the craft in Europe under Benno Schneider, a director in the Yiddish theater. She adopted the first name Joan after actress Joan Crawford, though the origin of the surname Alexander remained unknown to her family.

She is best known for portraying newspaper reporter Lois Lane on the radio serial The Adventures of Superman, a role she performed in more than 1,600 episodes. The series launched in 1940 and ran through 1951, airing initially through WOR in New York, then through the Mutual Broadcasting System, and finally on ABC. While most sources indicate she was not the first actress cast in the role, Alexander joined the production early in its run and became its defining performer of the character. She also voiced Lois Lane in the 1940s animated Superman short films produced by Fleischer Studios and distributed by Paramount Pictures, continuing through the ninth short before Famous Studios assumed production and relocated it to New Jersey. She returned to the role for one season of the 1966 Filmation animated series The New Adventures of Superman.

Beyond Superman, Alexander was active across multiple radio programs. She appeared on Dimension X, Philo Vance, Against the Storm, and Perry Mason, where she originated the role of Della Street, the secretary to defense attorney Perry Mason. She also played Althea on the radio serial The Brighter Day. On television, she served as a regular panelist on the ABC game show The Name's the Same, which ran from 1951 to 1955.

Her Broadway career included an appearance in Poor Richard, written by Jean Kerr, in 1964. In 1944, Alexander married actor John Sylvester White, who later became known for his role as Principal Woodman on Welcome Back, Kotter; this marriage remained unknown to her family until two years before her death. Following her divorce from White, she married surgeon Robert Crowley, with whom she had a daughter, Jane, later known as author and screenwriter Jane Stanton Hitchcock. After that marriage also ended in divorce, Alexander married Arthur Stanton, chairman of World-Wide Volkswagen, based in Orangeburg, New York, in 1954 or 1955. The company served as the distributor of Volkswagen and Audi vehicles across New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut and played a role in introducing the Volkswagen Beetle to the United States. Stanton adopted Jane when she was nine years old. Alexander and Stanton also had two sons together, Adam, who died in 1993, and Timothy. Arthur Stanton died on January 20, 1987.

The Stantons maintained a residence on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and a home in East Hampton, New York. Their daughter recounted to The New York Times that author George Plimpton proposed to his future wife, Freddy Espy, at one of their parties, that composer Leonard Bernstein occasionally performed at the piano in their home, and that comedy playwright Neil Simon wrote a sketch for Jane's 21st birthday.

In April 2008, Alexander filed a lawsuit against financial adviser Kenneth I. Starr, alleging that the estate of approximately $70 million left to her by Arthur Stanton had been used inappropriately and squandered by Starr, according to court papers.