Lucille Bliss | Voice of Smurfette, 96

Lucille Bliss, 96, who provided the cute, husky voice for the title character in the groundbreaking television cartoon series

Crusader Rabbit

in 1949, and later for Smurfette on the 1980s series

The Smurfs

, died Nov. 8 in Costa Mesa, Calif.

David Scheve, a producer-director for TDA Animation who had worked with her in recent years, confirmed her death.

Ms. Bliss' role as the voice of Crusader - the feisty little rabbit who seeks adventure beside his big, dumb buddy, Rags the Tiger - "made her one of the very first television stars," said Mark Evanier, an animation historian and voice director.

Crusader Rabbit was the first cartoon series produced specifically for television. "Her voice had a lot of personality, which was important because early animation was done so cheap it didn't have a lot of personality in it," Evanier said. Ms. Bliss played Crusader in the first season, starting in September 1949, but not in later versions.

She performed a panoply of parts over the next five decades. In 1950 she was the voice of Anastasia, the daughter of the wicked stepmother, in the Disney movie Cinderella. She had parts on The Flintstones and in several theatrical cartoons.

As Smurfette, she gave voice to the flirtatious character that many of the other blue, bulby-nosed little creatures had crushes on.

Ms. Bliss never married. No immediate family members survive. - N.Y. Times News Service