Betsy Palmer

Betsy Palmer was an actress known for numerous television appearances in both scripted and unscripted programs, and for a memorable role in the 1980 horror film Friday the 13th.

Born Patricia Betsy Hrunek in Indiana in 1926, Palmer graduated from DePaul University in Chicago and studied at the Actors Studio in New York City. She began her career in the mid-1950s with small roles in such television series as Martinsville, USA, Danger and Campbell Summer Soundstage.

She continued to work in TV while expanding into feature films, including an appearance in Mister Roberts, starring Henry Fonda and Jack Lemmon; The Long Gray Line, with Tyrone Power; and The Tin Star with Fonda and Anthony Perkins.

While she continued to work in scripted television — everything from Playhouse 90 and The Alcoa Steel Hour to The Love Boat and Knots Landing, in which she had a recurring role as Virginia Bullock, the aunt of Valene Ewing, played by Joan Van Ark — Palmer was also a fixture on the game-show circuit.

For a brief period she was a regular presence on the Today show, and for many years she was a frequent panelist on such game shows as I've Got a Secret, To Tell the Truth, What's My Line? and Password, and in the early ’50s was the original letter-turner on Wheel of Fortune.

In the 1980s she enjoyed a career resurgence thanks to the slasher classic Friday the 13th, in which she played the murderous Pamela Voorhees, mother of killer Jason Voorhees.

Palmer died on May 29, 2015, in Danbury, Connecticut. She was 88.