Betsy Palmer (born Patricia Betsy Hrunek; November , â€" May , ) was
an American actress, known as a regular supporting movie and Broadway
actress and television guest star, as a panelist on the game show I've
Got a Secret, and later for playing Jason Voorhees' mother, Pamela
Voorhees, in the popular slasher film Friday the th ().Palmer was born
Patricia Betsy Hrunek on November , , in East Chicago, Indiana, the
daughter of Marie (née Love), an adoptee, who launched the East
Chicago Business College before she married, and Vincent Rudolph
Hrunek (-), an industrial chemist who immigrated from Czechoslovakia,
and became a stay-at-home father. They moved to Hessville and she
attended Warren G Harding Elementary School in Hammond.[citation
needed] She performed in school plays all through childhood, graduated
from East Chicago's Roosevelt High School in , then attended East
Chicago Business College. After graduation, she worked as a
stenographer and secretary for the car foreman on the RIP track of the
B&O Railroad. She hated it, she said, because she was shut off from
people. Some time after Palmer took an aptitude test at the Chicago
YWCA, which indicated a flair for the arts, her father brought a
coworker home for dinner, a former New York actor who recommended she
study with David Itkin. Working days and commuting to night classes
from East Chicago, she graduated from the Goodman School of Drama at
the Art Institute of Chicago (now at DePaul University).>Palmer began
working, in summer stock, in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, then winter stock
at the Woodstock Opera House in Woodstock, Illinois, with Paul Newman,
and then summer stock, in Chicago with Imogene Coca. Having saved $,
she told her parents she was changing her name to Betsy Palmer and
moving to New York City with Sasha Igler, who had a job in
advertising.
an American actress, known as a regular supporting movie and Broadway
actress and television guest star, as a panelist on the game show I've
Got a Secret, and later for playing Jason Voorhees' mother, Pamela
Voorhees, in the popular slasher film Friday the th ().Palmer was born
Patricia Betsy Hrunek on November , , in East Chicago, Indiana, the
daughter of Marie (née Love), an adoptee, who launched the East
Chicago Business College before she married, and Vincent Rudolph
Hrunek (-), an industrial chemist who immigrated from Czechoslovakia,
and became a stay-at-home father. They moved to Hessville and she
attended Warren G Harding Elementary School in Hammond.[citation
needed] She performed in school plays all through childhood, graduated
from East Chicago's Roosevelt High School in , then attended East
Chicago Business College. After graduation, she worked as a
stenographer and secretary for the car foreman on the RIP track of the
B&O Railroad. She hated it, she said, because she was shut off from
people. Some time after Palmer took an aptitude test at the Chicago
YWCA, which indicated a flair for the arts, her father brought a
coworker home for dinner, a former New York actor who recommended she
study with David Itkin. Working days and commuting to night classes
from East Chicago, she graduated from the Goodman School of Drama at
the Art Institute of Chicago (now at DePaul University).>Palmer began
working, in summer stock, in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, then winter stock
at the Woodstock Opera House in Woodstock, Illinois, with Paul Newman,
and then summer stock, in Chicago with Imogene Coca. Having saved $,
she told her parents she was changing her name to Betsy Palmer and
moving to New York City with Sasha Igler, who had a job in
advertising.
Share this
SUBSCRIBE OUR NEWSLETTER
SUBSCRIBE OUR NEWSLETTER
Join us for free and get valuable content delivered right through your inbox.