Eldergays, tell me about Betsy Palmer

Wikipedia link

Oh, she was definitely Donald Pleasance big, OP.

R2 Seriously? I find that hard to believe.

Pleasance was in some great stuff and a very capable stage and film character actor. He was "a name."

This says everything you need to know about Betsy Palmer...

r3/OP, sorry, I was mixing up Donald Pleasance with Don Pardo.

She was big enough that critics thought it was disgraceful that she'd appear in a film like Friday the 13th and try to make a campaign for people to send her hate mail for it (they gave the wrong address but that's beside the point).

She had...It.

[quote] I know she was a famous stage actress,

Uh no, she wasn’t. At all. Unless you consider game shows an important part of her resume. As a 60s teen, that’s primarily what I knew her from. Although she did have a great body.

R8 I always thought she was more along the lines of Elaine Stritch, not Brett Somers.

R8: She's not like either. More of a bubbly pleasant presence.

R7: Many short runs and replacements of initial stars of big shows. She did a great deal of summer stock and dinner theater.

R10 here. The reference to R8 should be R9.

She was Nellie friggin' Forbush, r8.

She had...rhythm.

She was the poor man's Janis Paige.

saw her in The Shadow Box tour in the 70's. She was incredible on stage.

Didn't she take the Friday the 13th role because she was broke and needed a car?

Performed Tennessee Williams on Broadway...

She got the Playbill cover...

Still, was she a household name in 1980? Was it a big reveal when she appeared at the end of Friday the 13th??

If you do not know the name of Rula Lenska, it is impossible for you to know exactly how big Betsy Palmer was in 1980.

Since she had been a panelist on a top-rated, weekly prime time game show in the ‘60s, when there were just three networks to watch, yes, OP/19, she would have been well known to most of America in 1980 .

She and James Dean acted together in the television episode Death Is My Neighbor.

I remember her as a panelist on I've Got a Secret.

She had spunk.

I hate spunk.

R22 Dean and Palmer

She was doing Same Time, Next Year on Broadway when she got the offer to do Friday. And she only accepted it because her car crapped out leaving the theater one night and the salary from the movie paid enough for her to purchase a new car. She thought it was a piece of crap that no one would go and see. She was a correspondent for the Today Show pre Barbara Walters.

Interestingly enough, it came down to Estelle Parsons (another Today show correspondent pre Barbara Walters) and her for the role.

The director wanted Sally Field for Adrienne King's role.

She wasn't very fresh...if you know what I mean

I liked that they still let her be a panelist when she was pregnant. Bess would be svelte and glamorous in her gown and Betsy would be game in her maternity top.

Betsy and James Dean dated. When asked if she knew he was gay, Betsy said "He wasn't gay with me."

She had a delicious pussy.

A friend's aunt was Betsy's secretary when she was married to Dr. Vincent Merendino. They lived in Englewood, New Jersey. The aunt said she was a lovely woman and easy to work with. Later Betsy lived on West 85th near Columbus Avenue. When she became ill, moved to Connecticut to be near her daughter. She died at a Danbury hospice in 2015, age 88.

More of a personality than performer best known for her many appearances on TV game shows Never made it to the end of the cheap, dreadful Friday the 13th, but remember her from the 50s Joan Crawford classic Queen Bee some of which seems to have inspired the film Mommie Dearest. Donald Pleasance who was a regular presence and recognizable character actor in The Great Escape, You Only Live Twice, Escape from New York, Cul-de-sac, Eye of the Devil, Wake in Fright, The Eagle has Landed, Escape to Witch Mountain, The Last Tycoon...long before Halloween.

1980s Friday the !3th was Palmer's first appearance in a theatrical film since 1959s The Last Angry Man.

She was on a "Newhart" episode on Decades today, playing George's (Tom Poston) high school sweetheart (at a HS reunion). I guess it was another type of reunion, since both Tom and Betsy were veterans of the '50s/60s panel shows. Tom was mainly on "To Tell the Truth," and Betsy was a regular on "I've Got A Secret."

Biography: Betsy Palmer was born Patricia Betsy Hrunek on November 1, 1926 in East Chicago, Indiana to Marie and Rudolph Vincent Hrunek. She attended the Goodman School of Drama at DePaul University. The beginnings of her acting career were in summer stock theatre. She married Vincent J. Merendino in 1954, with whom she had one daughter -- Melissa Merendino.

Film/TV Credits: Film credits include: "Bell Witch: The Movie," "Unveiled," "The Fear: Resurrection," "Goddess of Love," "Isabel's Choice," "Friday the 13th Part 2," "Friday the 13th," "Queen Bee," "The Long Gray Line," and "Mister Roberts." Television credits include: "Knots Landing," "The United States Steel Hour," "Studio One in Hollywood," "Goodyear Playhouse," and "The Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse."

Her IMDB page...

Her sister Rosy is the much more fun and interesting of the two.

Carp and sneer all you want, girls--Betsy Palmer was big to ME. Being a panelist on "I've Got a Secret" conferred status and glamour.

She oozed glamour, r38...

Right you are, [R39]!!!!!

I'll pray for her.

My dad also grew up in East Chicago and was friends with the Hrunek family. He and Betsy - then known as “Patty” - dated a few times when they were in high school. Decades later, my parents were living in Minneapolis and Betsy was in a national touring company in a play whose name I don’t remember. My dad sent a note to her through the production company when they performed there. Evidently Betsy did indeed remember him and was delighted to hear from him....even invited my folks to join her backstage after the performance, where they spent an hour or so catching up on mutual friends from their high school days. My mom said she couldn’t have been lovelier or more gracious.

Thanks for the info!

IMDB and Wikipedia are nice, but you really don't get the feeling until you ask around.

[quote]Her sister Rosy is the much more fun and interesting of the two.

I think you mean Rosy Palm her four daughters and one son.

She doesn't have a Desert Island Disc episode, so she couldn't have been that famous lol

1991

I’ve been amazed of the durability of some of these threads about stats of yesteryear, but, alas, I doubt our Betsy has sufficient juice.

R47 That's why I was asking on here lol

I wanted to know how big of a shock it was that she did it.

OP a surprise perhaps, but not a shock.

I liked her during her two year stint on Knots Landing, she was even a murder suspect on that nighttime soap!

Pam Grier played one of the detectives investigating her

Like this, r42?

She was just an NYC stage and talk show actress, got it.

shes lively when interviewed in that documentary on Joan: The Ultimate Movie Star. Betsy from 1.06.

I had a huge crush on Betsy when I was kid watching her weekly on I've Got a Secret.

Years later (mid-1980s) I got to work with her in Philadelphia in a production of Strindberg's The Father (she played the Mother) and she was every bit as sweet, charming and professional as I could have hoped. And she was magnificent in the play, not an easy role by any stretch. At the end of the run she gave me a beautiful hand-painted apple which she called a Barrymore Apple, which I guess was some kind of theatrical tradition.

I just adored her. Lovely woman.

She played Suz on As The World Turns on 1982.

Bumping cause even though I commented and got some WWs the thread has not been saved for me.

She was two-faced.

Was Friday the 13th her magnum opus?

No, it was her lucky fluke. Too bad she didn't get paid more. I doubt she had a piece of the profit or gross.

Getting her head chopped off with her arms still flailing away was the highlight of her career.

From R53’s linked documentary, we know that Joan Crawford was, per Betsy, “ballin’” their big-dicked co-star, John Ireland.

R19 I saw Friday the 13th first run in early June of 1980 after my 7th grade finals. My mother took me because she was awesome. I (13) had no idea who Betsy was (and I knew a lot of before-my-time pop culture) but my mother (48) did: “Oh that’s Betsy Palmer. She was on…hmm. I don’t know. But that’s Betsy Palmer.”

She's in the '55 film Mister Roberts.

R62 Do you think she did better than Shelly Winters and Estelle Parsons could do? I think so.

Probably less hammy than Winters or Parsons.

Palmer was so perfect as Mrs. Voorhees that I have a hard time imagining any other actress in the role.

Of course, if someone were doing a shot-for-shot remake like Gus Van Sant's Psycho, I'd get Meryl Streep to play Mrs. Voorhees just for shits and giggles.

R66 Really? I would pick Molly Shannon or Laura Linney