Betsy to Heavens

Betsy Palmer, best remembered for playing a woman with overly developed maternal instincts, has died at the age of 88. In another life, she had tangential contact with greatness, appearing in the tour company of South Pacific, and creating the role of Virginia in Paddy Chayefsky's teleplay of Marty, garnering her just enough fame to be a regular panelist on I’ve Got a Secret. By the late 1970s, she was largely forgotten and down on her luck. Her need for a new car led her to appear in Friday the 13th (despite thinking the script was “a piece of shit.”) as Pamela Voorhees, former cook at Camp Crystal Lake whose freak show of a son drowned because the counselors weren’t watching him swim. The middle-aged matron then became a killing machine, combining stealth, resourcefulness and strength to become Liam Neeson in a cable-knit sweater, slaughtering horny pot-smoking counselors by the busload before ending up on the wrong end of a machete.