Dena Dietrich

Dena Dietrich, born Deanne Frances Dietrich on December 4, 1928, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was an American actress whose career spanned stage, film, and television across several decades. She died on November 21, 2020, at a health-care facility in Los Angeles, two weeks short of her 92nd birthday, and was subsequently cremated by the Neptune Society, her ashes scattered at sea.

Dietrich trained at HB Studio and built her Broadway career between 1965 and 1971. Her stage credits included Here's Where I Belong, The Prisoner of Second Avenue, The Freaking Out of Stephanie Blake, Funny Girl, and The Rimers of Eldritch.

On television, Dietrich accumulated an extensive list of recurring roles. She played Grace Peterson in Adam's Rib, Dena Madison in Karen, Estelle Milner in Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers, Molly Gibbons in The Practice, Ethel Armbrewster in The Ropers, and Pearl Newman in 13 East. She also appeared in recurring capacities on Life with Lucy, Santa Barbara, All My Children, and Philly, and made guest appearances on Emergency!, Life Goes On, NYPD Blue, Murphy Brown, and The Golden Girls, where she portrayed Dorothy's sister Gloria. Her film work included The Wild Party (1975), Disney's The North Avenue Irregulars (1979), and Mel Brooks's History of the World, Part I (1981). From 1983 until 1999, she provided the voice of the grandmother narrator on the Horizons dark ride attraction at Epcot in Walt Disney World.

Dietrich became widely recognized for her portrayal of Mother Nature in a series of 30-second Chiffon margarine television commercials that ran from 1971 to 1979. In the spots, she appeared in a white gown and a crown of daisies, sampling what she assumed to be butter before being informed by an unseen narrator, voiced by Mason Adams, that she had in fact tasted Chiffon margarine. Her character's indignant response — "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature!" — became her trademark catchphrase, delivered before she commanded some natural force, such as thunder, lightning, or a charging elephant, to retaliate.