Ted Key, famous for creating the witty and independent maid character Hazel, died on Saturday at his home in Tredyffrin Township, near Philadelphia, at the age of 95.

His death was confirmed by his son Peter, who said Key had found out he had bladder cancer in 2006 and he had also had a stroke in September.

Key’s best known creation is Hazel, a character that debuted in the Saturday Evening Post in 1943. The cartoon was successful, so it became a regular feature in the magazine. Hazel was then portrayed by Shirley Booth on television from 1961 to 1966 and the first collection of “Hazel” cartoons, published by Dutton in 1946, sold 500,000 copies. In all, Dutton published eight collections of “Hazel” cartoons.

Key’s son told the Los Angeles Times that his father drew his inspiration for “Hazel” from a dream he had had.

"He woke up, wrote it down and went back to sleep," Peter Key told The Times on Monday. "He woke up the next morning and looked at it, expecting the thing to be crummy, because most of the gags that occurred to him in his sleep were crummy."

But this time he liked the inspiration his dream had provided him with, and immediately drew the cartoon and sold it to the Saturday Evening Post.

The following week, he sold maid cartoons to three newspapers, until the Post said it wanted the maid cartoons exclusively.

Key had picked the name for the maid randomly, but was later proud to see it became synonymous with maids.

But there are two of Key’s characters that are more famous than Hazel nowadays: genius dog Mr. Peabody and his adopted boy, Sherman, who traveled in time together. The two characters were created for producer Jay Ward in the late 50’s for the cartoon series “Rocky and His Friends.”

Key was born as Theodore Keyser in Fresno on Aug.25, 1912. He graduated from UC Berkeley in 1933 and then moved to New York to start a career as a cartoonist. He wrote the screenplay for the Disney film “The Cat from Outer Space” and also wrote the stories for Disney’s “the Million Dollar Duck” and “Gus.”

Key is survived by his second wife, Bonnie, and three sons and three grandchildren. His first wife, Anne, died in 1984.