Cartoonist and writer Ted Key died on 3 May 2008. He was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2006, and suffered a stroke in September 2007. Born Theodore Keyser in Fresno, California, on 25 August 1912, he created the comic strip Hazel and “Mr. Peabody and Sherman,” who were a feature on television’s Rocky and Bullwinkle show.
He was a freelance cartoonist in New York City when he sold a single-panel cartoon about a maid to the Saturday Evening Post in 1943. That sale turned into Hazel, and he became a regular contributor to the magazine. His 1946 collection of Hazel cartoons sold half a million copies. The cartoon turned into an early 1960s sitcom, first on NBC and then on CBS.
In 1969, King Features Syndicate began distributing Hazel to the newspapers, and even though Key retired in 1993, his older cartoons are still appearing.
Key graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1933, and then moved to New York to start a career as a freelance cartoonist. He also wrote for radio in the early 1940s. He served in the Army during World War II, but was assigned to domestic posts.
In addition Hazel and Mr. Peabody and Sherman, Key wrote the screenplay for The Cat from Outer Space (1978), Digby, the Biggest Dog in the World (1973), and The Million Dollar Duck (1971).