The name Lucille Bliss probably doesn’t ring any bells, but if you watched cartoons over the last, well, fifty years or so, you recognize her voice.
Bliss was a prolific voice actress: Her earliest known credit was in Disney’s Cinderella (she played one of the stepsisters) and she just kept working. Among other cartoons, she was the voice of Mrs. Fitzgibbons in The Secret of NIMH and worked extensively on Hanna Barbera cartoons, including serving as the original voice of Elroy before being fired for pretty much no good reason. She was also a prolific teacher of voice actors; quite a few cartoon voices now studied under her.
But she was best known for two voices: Smurfette, who she created the voice for early in the show’s run, and Mrs. Bitters for Invader Zim. Both are hard to forget, although for entirely different reasons:
Bliss also worked in video games: She voiced Sharpei and Waitron in Space Quest 6, Rozatta in Star Wars: Bounty Hunter, and Shaden in the Battlestar Galactica game.
We just recently found out about Bliss’ passing: It happened November 8th, of natural causes. We here at Gamma Squad would like to extend our condolences to Bliss’ family and friends. And we hope she’s up there, somewhere, explaining how the universe will kill us all.