Marta Kristen

Kristen was born Birgit Annalisa Rusanen in Oslo, Norway, to a Finnish mother and a German soldier father who was killed during World War II. (Her Finnish mother gave up little Birgit to save her the pain of growing up knowing her real parents were part of the Nazi regime or Third Reich.) Birgit spent her first years in an orphanage in Norway,[1] and was then adopted in 1949 by a couple from Detroit, Michigan, Harold Oliver Soderquist[2] and his wife, Bertha,[3] who renamed her Martha Annalise Soderquist. Her adoptive father was a professor of education at Wayne University, also in Detroit.[4][5] Kristen has one brother, whom her parents also adopted.[6]

In 1959, Kristen moved to the Los Angeles area while her father was on sabbatical leave from his professorship. She remained there with a guardian, and graduated from Santa Monica High School.[4]

Kristen and Tommy Kirk in Savage Sam

Marta Kristen in 2018

Reflecting her Scandinavian heritage, Kristen adopted the more European-sounding "Marta" and used Marta Kristen as her stage name.[3] She first appeared in a 1961 episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, "Bang! You're Dead", alongside Billy Mumy, who later co-starred with Kristen in Lost in Space. In 1963, she starred with Tony Dow in "Four Feet in the Morning," an episode of The Eleventh Hour. and as Peggy Meredith on My Three Sons.

Kristen's first film role was in the 1963 Walt Disney production of Savage Sam. She played the role of Lorelei in the 1965 movie Beach Blanket Bingo.

Kristen starred in Lost in Space from its beginning in 1965 until its cancellation in 1968. Afterwards, she had a daughter, born in 1969, and appeared in more than forty television commercials as well as making numerous guest appearances on television shows. She also appeared in the A&E biography Jonathan Harris: Never Fear, Smith Is Here in 2002.

She also made the occasional film appearance in movies such as Terminal Island (1973), Once in 1974, appearing as a bare breasted 'Humanity', and the science-fiction film Battle Beyond the Stars (1980); and had a cameo role in the 1998 movie Lost in Space. Kristen also provided voice work for the 2009 animated theatrical short "The Bolt Who Screwed Christmas" which also included voice work from her Lost in Space co-stars Harris, Mumy, and Angela Cartwright.

Kristen has been married twice. Her first marriage was to Terry Treadwell, a psychologist.[7][8][6] She met her second husband, Kevin P. Kane, in 1974 and they married on November 18, 1978. They lived in Santa Monica, California, with two rescue dogs[9] until 2016, when Kristen announced on her Facebook page that Kane had died.[10]

Wikiquote has quotations related to Marta Kristen.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Marta Kristen.

• Marta Kristen at IMDb 
• Official website