Betsy Palmer

The Mercedes a Killer Bought

Betsy Palmer just wanted to buy a new car. It was 1979, and her old Volkswagen had left her stranded too many times on the roads of Connecticut. That's why she accepted that horror script that seemed like absolute garbage to her.

She accepted the role of Pamela Voorhees for $1000 a day.

She needed ten days of filming to pay for the Mercedes she had seen at a nearby dealership. What she considered a purely paycheck job ended up overshadowing decades of work in television and New York theater.

And it worked.

The Neighbor from Black-and-White Television

Before stepping onto the Crystal Lake campground, she was already a familiar face in American living rooms. She was a recurring guest on the game show I've Got a Secret for almost a decade. There, she projected the image of a perfect woman: elegant and always smiling for the camera.

But her training was in drama. She studied at the Actors Studio and shared the stage with the great figures of Broadway's golden age. In 1955 she shot Mister Roberts under the direction of John Ford, sharing the bill with Henry Fonda and Jack Lemmon.

In 1957 she worked with Tyrone Power on The Abandoned, and it seemed her destiny was tied to the major Hollywood studios. But the industry changed pace, and Palmer preferred to retreat to the small screen and New York stages.

A Wool Sweater and a Machete

When she read the script for Friday the 13th, her reaction was immediate rejection. She told her agent it was junk and that no one would go see a movie where teenagers died so violently.

But the car debt weighed more heavily than artistic pride.

During the shoot in 1979, Palmer kept somewhat distant from the rest of the young cast. It wasn't a acting method; she simply still believed the project was irrelevant to her career. The surprise came in 1980, when the film earned nearly 40 million dollars in the U.S. market alone.

That blue wool sweater clung to her skin forever.

Although she appears only in the film's final minutes, her portrayal of Jason's mother defined the 1980s slasher genre. The mix of maternal sweetness and murderous madness proved far scarier than any masked monster.

Refuge on Stage and in Memory

For much of the 1990s, she worked to remind audiences that she was much more than the mother of a supernatural killer. She returned to the stage in plays such as Love Letters and took part in national tours that won her critics' respect once again.

And she never fully turned her back on horror fans.

She attended conventions because she enjoyed direct contact with audiences. In 2007 she took part in the documentary Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film, sharing her cynical yet grateful view of the genre.

Betsy Palmer died of natural causes on May 29, 2015 at a palliative care center in Danbury. She was 88 years old at the time of her death.