Betsy Palmer (Nov. 1, 1926 - May 29, 2015), born Patricia Betsy Hrunek, was an American actress appearing in game shows and a regular panelist and acted as a Broadway TV and movie star starting in the ‘50s. Her most famous role is the female serial killer and mother, Pamela Voorhees, in the slasher flick Friday the 13th (1980). She is perhaps one of the most awesomest people in history. She made 2 appearances in Murder, She Wrote. One as a Non-Killer, the other a Killer (not surprising). Her first appearance in Murder, She Wrote was in 1985 (basically 5 years after she did the Friday the 13th movie) in Season 2’s 10th episode “Sticks and Stones”. Her 2nd was in 1989 (basically 9 years post Friday the 13th) in the Season 5’s 9th episode “Something Borrowed, Someone Blue”. She was unfortunately not the killer in the Season 2 episode, but she returned as her killer self once more in the Season 5 episode, possibly nodding and/or honoring her killer self and the Pamela Voorhees we all know and love.
S5E9 “Something Borrowed, Someone Blue “. Her 2nd appearance, this time as her killer self role (fortunate for her fans).
S2E10 “Sticks and Stones”. Her 1st appearance. She does not show a killer role and is (unfortunately) not the killer in this one. Still awesome though seeing her.
Trivia[]
- Betsy also appeared in another crime detective show, Columbo, in one movie/episode of the show’s 10th season’s 4th episode entitled “Death Hits the Jackpot”. She was not an apparent killer in this and her appearance was very minor, but fans can still enjoy seeing her.
- Betsy’s Mercedes car broke down, and looking to get a new car, her staring in the Friday the 13th movie was her best option to make enough money to get the car she wanted, so without the car deal, Pamela Voorhees would’ve never come to be.
- Pamela’s best known outfit is an Irish blueish-grey sweater, but in most of the movie, she wore a brown plaid-looking shirt (which can slightly be seen underneath the sweater over it).
- Pamela Voorhees is arguably one of the greatest horror movie killers.
- Jason, Pamela’s son, is also a killer, but Pamela is the original and no one can beat her. She is also one of the few female serial killers in a horror film.
- in the episode “Sticks and Stones”, she can be seen chatting with the guy named Michael. What’s funny about it is that the name Michael belongs to another serial killer from the Halloween franchise (which came BEFORE Friday the 13th ), Michael Myers. Thus, You would be unwittingly bringing 2 horror film serial killers together. One Photo depicts this.
- Her Name, Valerie/Mrs. Parker, from Something Borrowed, Someone Blue, was said to be a “fake alias”, possibly referring her known name as Pamela Voorhees. The Name used in Sticks and Stones, Lila Norris, didn’t get started with the same fate as of yet but fans of Friday the 13th can argue if it’s fake for their enjoyment since the name Pamela is what they know her best as.
- Fittingly enough, the title “Murder, She Wrote” fits her known character very well, which leads to a coincidence or not of her appearances on this show.
- a recent thing started with someone stating a fact that the magician Harry Houdini (b. Mar. 24, 1874) died on Halloween (a long going fact), but the new fact of the statement was that he died a day before Betsy was born, since her Birth was 1st day of November, and they each ended/began their lives in the year 1926. This is one of the few interesting cases where 2 people who have nothing to do with each other and are both famous in different ways died / were born a very short time (ranging from a day to an amount of hours) after the other person’s Death/Before the other’s Birth.
- to get into more detail, Betsy was born at exactly 7:00 PM. Houdini died at 1:30 PM the day before. This means that Betsy was born a day and a half or 28 hours later. They were each granted death/birth on the PM side of the timing to make it even more eerie.
- also, he was 52 at death, which was eerily close to Betsy’s age at the time of playing Pamela in 1980. she was almost 54. She was basically 53 1/2 because the film came out in May (eerily also, she died in May 2015) and her birthday is in November. Quite Obviously, Betsy lived a much longer and fine life than Houdini (whose exact cause of death is still a mystery).
- Pamela worked as a cook for Camp Crystal Lake until her son drowned, ultimately leading her to become the killer that she is.
- weirdly enough, Angela Lansbury (who played Jessica Fletcher) sort of looks like Betsy/Pamela in the ‘80s and some past that. Also weirdly enough, both women appeared in 2 sketches of the Adult Swim stop-motion sketches series, Robot Chicken. Pamela was a plaintiff in one suing her son for ownership of the movies and Angela was in a sketch called “Murder, She Wrote: Miami”.
- she was mentioned twice in 2 of the Scream Movies. The first one (1996) when the GhostFace Killer corrected Drew Barrymore’s character Casey Becker during the horror trivia questions scene after she kept saying on the phone that Jason was always the killer. She was mentioned in The 2nd one (1997) when Randy Meeks remarks “Mrs. Voorhees was a terrific Serial Killer!”.
- Pamela’s face can be noticed in the movie before her actual appearance during the scene when Ned (another one of her victims) looks at her from below the cabin she’s in wearing a black rain coat shortly before his death (skit throat) if one notices at the right time when you see her face looking at Ned before turning around. If even Friday the 13th fans never noticed this before, this would change everything as far as the movie point of surprising the viewers and when Mrs. Voorhees appears.
- all actions of killings and other stuff including the scenes with Jack’s throat impaled with the arrows and her brown plaid shirt and her twitching hands after her beheading in the movie were not performed by Betsy, but by a some form of stuntman, Not another woman at all.
- originally, the female camp counselor (named Claudette) who was among the 2 who let Jason drown by having sex was supposed to be stronger than Pamela thought and as a result they had a struggle that led Pamela to loose her finger after it gets cut off. Throughout the movie, you would see the missing finger when scenes of her hand or some of her arm were shown.
- Betsy’s appearance count in this series is twice, making her one of some of the people of this show to return in a later season/episode (albeit under a different role).
- Betsy starred together with another star who portrayed a serial killer in a horror movie, Anthony Perkins, in the western movie The Tin Star (1957). Like Her, this was also before his famous killer role. He portrayed Norman Bates in Psycho (1960), 3 years later. Betsy didn’t get her Pamela Voorhees role until 1980, 23 years later (not counting production in 1979).
- that was also 20 years after Psycho came out when Anthony Perkins starred as a killer first.
- the actor also died at the age of 60 from AIDS as a result from being gay. Betsy Palmer long outlived him. He died on September 12, 1992. She at the time would’ve almost been almost 66.
- The Jeep Pamela owns is identical to the new owner of Camp Crystal Lake Steve Christy’s Jeep. One way to distinguish their Jeeps is that her Jeep’s top had been up and his was down throughout the movie. Other than that, the resemblance it identical and it is a perfect way to further implant the element of surprise as viewers would be expecting Steve, as Alice Hardy did, not some strange woman who is secretly wielding a knife and other things because she is a nutcase killer and a too loving nut mother to not stop talking about her son Jason and on.
- Murder, She Wrote depicted her both as a killer and a seemingly innocent person. She played a more minor role and got less screen time in “Sticks and Stones” than in “Something Borrowed, Someone Blue “ where she was the main focus of the plot.
- Betsy never knew or heard of the Hockey Mask that “her son” mainly wears, and remarked on how could that happen if he is dead since he died as a boy in the lake and he isn’t supposed to be back and as a grown man.
- Pamela wears a brown plaid flannel shirt. It is unique because she is hardly ever shown in anything with it. She also wears a black raincoat and matching Goulashes.
- Friday the 13th was Betsy Palmer’s first ever movie she did since 1959 with The Last Angry Man.
- There is a Friday the 13th comic book from 2007 focusing on her character.
- Pamela uses the Bowie Knife the most out of all the weapons she has, with the 2nd appearing to be the Bow and Arrows and the 3rd being the Axe and the least being the Machete.
Betsy Palmer Episode Links[]
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