Former 'SNL' writer, 'Square Pegs' creator Anne Beatts dead at 74

April 8 (UPI) -- Anne Beatts a comedy writer who helmed many of Saturday Night Live's earliest characters has died. She was 74 years old.

Beatts died at her home in West Hollywood on Wednesday and a cause of death has not yet been confirmed, Variety and Deadline reported.

Beatts began her comedy career writing for the National Lampoon where she became the publication's first female editor. She wrote a notorious Volkswagen Beetle spoof ad that featured the car floating alongside the line "If Ted Kennedy drove a Volkswagen, he'd be President today," which prompted a lawsuit from the car company.

While working at the National Lampoon she began dating Michael O'Donoghue and the pair worked together to help launch SNL in 1975.

During her time at SNL Beatts and her writing partner Rosie Schuster crafted notable characters including Todd and Lisa Lupner, Uncle Roy, Larain Newman's Child Psychiatrist, Irwin Mainway and Fred Garvin, Male Prostitute. She also returned as a consultant for the show's 25th anniversary special in 1999.

She was nominated for five Emmys while writing at SNL and won twice.

In the 1980s, she created the CBS comedy Square Pegs starring Sarah Jessica Parker and chose to hire a mostly female writing staff along with the female-led cast.

"They needed to be people who had been girls in high school," she said in a 2009 interview.

Parker tweeted Thursday that she was "struggling to find adequate and appropriate descriptive words to describe her singular self."

"Gosh, she was really something," she wrote.

Beatts also published a humor column in the Los Angeles Times in the late 1990s, published several books, wrote for a pair of Broadway productions and produced an animated series based on The Blues Brothers with Judy Belushi, the widow of SNL alum John Belushi.

Beginning in 2009, Beatts worked as an instructor at Chapman University's Dodge College Film and Media Arts.

"Anne wasn't just the queen of comedy; she was also an extraordinary mentor to many students," Stephen Galloway, dean of Dodge College, told Variety. "She would read their work and help them find internships, always going above and beyond the expectations of her job."

Beatts is survived by her daughter Jaylene Beatts, sister Barbara, brother Murray and nieces Kate and Jennifer.