Raisin Maiden

So who’s the woman on the box? Unlike Betty Crocker, which created--and repeatedly updated--its fictional cover girl, the sun-bonneted woman of indeterminate age who smiles on every box of Sun-Maid raisins was a real person.

Her name was Lorraine Collett and in 1915, she was sitting in her front yard letting her hair dry before participating in Fresno’s first Raisin Day Parade. A Sun-Maid executive was passing by and was struck by the sight. He had a photographer come take her picture, then had artist Fanny Scafford paint the picture from it.

She did, posing Collett in a wholesome white blouse and bright red bonnet and carrying a tray overflowing with fresh grapes. The picture quickly became famous across the country, but all Collett made from it was the $15 modeling fee and a bit part in “Trail of the Lonesome Pine,” a 1936 movie starring Henry Fonda and Fred MacMurray. When the painting later wound up in her possession, she hung it in the convalescent home she ran.

Collett, who died 10 years ago at the age of 90, sold the bonnet and the painting to Sun-Maid in 1974. The painting hangs in the cooperative’s Kingsburg offices. The bonnet is now a part of the Smithsonian Institution’s collection, having been donated in 1988 as part of the growers’ cooperative’s 75th anniversary celebration.