By: E&P Staff Cartoonist Ted Key, whose Hazel maid character inspired a TV show starring Shirley Booth, died Saturday in Pennsylvania at the age of 95.
Key was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2006 and suffered a stroke last September.
The Fresno, Calif., native moved to New York to freelance magazine cartoons after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley in 1933. He also wrote for radio.
His big break came in 1943, when he sold a maid cartoon to The Saturday Evening Post. The Hazel character went on to be featured in numerous Post cartoons and best-selling book collections, and was eventually syndicated in newspaper comic form via King Features Syndicate.
The "Hazel" TV show began in 1961, ran four years on NBC and one year on CBS, and won two Emmy awards for Booth.
Key also created other cartoon characters -- including Diz and Liz for "Jack and Jill" magazine, and Peabody and Sherman for animator Jay Ward.
In 1951, Key came up with a prototype of a desk calendar featuring a different cartoon every day. That kind of calendar is very common today, but would have been one of the first of its kind back then if Key's idea had been fully executed.
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