Betsy Palmer (born Patricia Betsy Hrunek; November 1, 1926 – May 29, 2015) was an American actress known for her many film and Broadway roles, television guest-starring appearances, as a panelist on the game show I've Got a Secret, and later for playing Pamela Voorhees in the 1980 film Friday the 13th. Early life Palmer was born Patricia Betsy Hrunek on November 1, 1926, 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 (1894-1969), an industrial chemist who immigrated from Czechoslovakia, and became a stay-at-home father. She performed in school plays all through childhood, graduated from East Chicago's Roosevelt High School in 1944, 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). Acting career Palmer began working in summer stock in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, then in winter stock at the Woodstock Opera House in Woodstock, Illinois, with Paul Newman, and then summer stock in Chicago with Imogene Coca. Having saved $400, 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. Palmer got her first television acting job in 1951 when she joined the cast of the 15-minute weekday television soap opera Miss Susan, which was produced in Philadelphia, and all actors traveled each day from New York City by train. She was "discovered" for this role by Norman Lessing while attending a party in the apartment of actor Frank Sutton, who was married to Toby Igler, the sister of Palmer's roommate, Sasha Igler. She had been in Manhattan less than one week. A life member of the Actors Studio, Palmer's stage work included a tour of South Pacific (as Nellie Forbush) and a summer-stock season in the title