Siegel was born in
Cleveland, Ohio, in 1917, the daughter of Hungarian immigrants.
The New York Times wrote, "Ms. Siegel was the first in a long line of Lois Lanes, who have included
Phyllis Coates,
Noel Neill,
Teri Hatcher, and
Erica Durance on television, as well as
Margot Kidder in the movies." Following her modeling work for Shuster, she worked as an artist's model, sometimes using the professional name "Joanne Carter". She worked for a ship builder in California during
World War II. After the war, Siegel moved to New York, where she ran into Jerry Siegel at a costume ball to raise money for cartoonists. Despite the success of Superman in comic books, television and motion pictures, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster had sold the copyright to
Detective Comics for $130. In 2006, Siegel won a partial summary judgment in a lawsuit with DC Comics. The Court found that Joanne Siegel and her daughter had successfully recaptured the
Superboy copyright in 2004 and opined that the television program
Smallville was infringing the Siegels' copyright. In 2008, Siegel secured a further ruling from a federal court in Los Angeles restoring her husband's co-authorship share of the original Superman copyrights. In a 72-page decision, the Court ruled that Jerry Siegel was entitled to claim a share of the United States copyright to Superman while leaving intact DC Comics' international rights to the character. Following the ruling, Joanne Siegel told the press, "We were just stubborn. It was a dream of Jerry's, and we just took up the task." ==Legacy==