- Born
- Died
- Birth nameVirginia Christine Kraft
- Height5′ 4″ (1.63 m)
- Virginia has a long career as a character actress on the screen, but she will always be best remembered as the Swedish "Mrs. Olsen", who somehow knew everything about making coffee, and we somehow always found her in the kitchen of some hapless young housewife who just couldn't seem to make good coffee. Mrs. Olsen taught these women how to do so, as long as it involved using "Mountain Grown" Folger's brand Coffee. For some reason only Mrs. Olsen knew, no other kind of coffee you could buy was any good. And if you believe her, I have some land you'll be interested in!
Virginia was born in the small Iowa town of Stanton, which later converted its water tower to resemble a coffee pot in honor of its most famous citizen. When her family moved to Los Angeles, Virginia worked in radio while attending the University of California, Los Angeles. She was trained for a theatrical career by actor/director Fritz Feld, whom she married in 1940. In 1942, she signed a contract with Warner Bros. and started appearing in various films. Her first film was, Edge of Darkness (1943), in which she played a Norwegian peasant girl called "Miss Olson". Over the years, she appeared in prestigious films such as High Noon (1952) and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) - to horror in The Mummy's Curse (1944) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). She was a favorite of Stanley Kramer, appearing in a number of his films. But her greatest fame came in the 1960's when she started her 21-year stint as the matronly "Mrs. Olsen", who always had comforting words for young married couples while pouring Folger's Coffee in the TV ads.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Tony Fontana <tony.fontana@spacebbs.com>
- SpouseFritz Feld(November 10, 1940 - November 18, 1993) (his death, 2 children)
- Best-known to Americans as "Mrs. Olsen" in Folgers Coffee TV commercials in the 1960s/70s. Fans who knew little of her earlier film career were surprised to find that, even though she was raised in heavily Scandinavian communities in Iowa, she had no accent.
- Christine was constantly confused with contemporary, Virginia Gregg. Gregg had the upper hand until Christine landed the Mrs. Olson commercials. They were close in spite of always competing for the same role, or type of role.
- As Mrs. Olsen, Virginia always boasted Folger's was "Mountain Grown coffee, the richest kind!". In an early B & W commercial, she even rescued the future Batgirl, Yvonne Craig, from a brutal coffee confession by her TV ad husband. He ultimately had to confess his wife's coffee was as good as Mrs. Olsen's because wifey was now using Folgers.
- [on Lionel Atwill, with whom she worked in Raiders of Ghost City (1944)] Lionel Atwill was a great ham, a poseur, and I mean that as a compliment. We got along very well - he was a delight.
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