One of children TV's most iconic voices has fallen silent.
Lucille Bliss, the actress who played Smurfette in the classic 1980s cartoon The Smurfs, has died. She was 96.
Bliss died Nov. 8 of natural causes at an assisted living center in Costa Mesa, Calif., the Orange County coroner told the Los Angeles Times.
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During a six-decade career in film and television, Bliss gave voice to a series of well-known toons. In 1950, one of her first roles was in Disney's Cinderella as Anastasia Tremaine, the clumsy redheaded stepsister who torments the titular character and tries to land Prince Charming for herself.
The same year Cinderella was released, Bliss originated the character of Crusader Rabbit, the first ever made-for-television cartoon that aired on NBC. It was cocreated by Jay Ward, who later launched Rocky and Bullwinkle and Dudley Do-Right.
After Crusader Rabbit ended in 1952, Blissed continued to land a variety of voice roles for Disney, MGM and Hanna-Barbera Productions.
She voiced Tuffy in MGM's Robin Hoodwinked, Hugo in The Flintstones and the original Elroy in The Jetsons—a job she lost after refusing to work under a stage name to hide the fact she was a woman voicing a little boy.
But Bliss is perhaps best remembered as the voice of Smurfette, the leading lady of tiny blue tribe in The Smurfs. Her squeaky voice was replicated in the 2011 movie by Katy Perry.
Bliss never married and left no immediate survivors.
