WESTSIDER BETSY PALMER
Star of Same Time, Next Year
4-1-78
"Oh, do you take shorthand?" said Betsy Palmer as we sat down in her dressing room to chat between shows. "I could always read and write shorthand. I worked for the B & O Railroad as a stenographer before I went away to school and learned acting. I guess if I had to, I could brush up and go back to it."
It's most unlikely that she'll ever have to. Even if her Tony Award winning play, Same Time, Next Year, should happen to close, Betsy would find herself swamped with offers for choice acting roles. But her hit show about the lighter side of adultery won't be closing for a long time yet. It is currently being made into a film starring Ellen Burstyn and Alan Alda.
"A lot of people think of me as a personality rather than an actress, and when they come to see me they expect to see that personality," says Palmer, who has one of the more recognizable names and faces on Broadway. "Mostly people know me from panel shows. It's been a double-edged sword for me. When they see me doing something that's really dramatic, they say, 'My God, she can act!'"
She has made countless appearances on What's My Line?, Girl Talk and The Today Show, but to most television viewers she is best remembered as the bright, beautiful, All-American girl who for 11 years was a panelist on I've Got a Secret.
During her years of TV stardom Betsy was doing plenty of serious acting — everything from Shakespeare to Peter Pan to Ibsen. She has made five Hollywood films and performed the lead in numerous Broadway shows, including South Pacific, Cactus Flower and Tennessee Williams' Eccentricities of a Nightingale. Few of her roles, however, have been as demanding as Doris in Same Time, Next Year.
To begin with, she and her co-star, Monte Markham, are the only characters in the play. Second, the play's action takes place over a period of 25 years, in which Doris goes through momentous changes. In doing this transformation smoothly, Betsy creates a character so believable and lovable that the audience forgives her for cheating on her husband, which she does one weekend a year in order to meet her lover George.
"Doing the play takes all my energy.I'm a single woman now, and have been for three years. But if I were involved with somebody now, it would take up a lot of my energies. So it doesn't bother me; when the time comes for me to be involved, I will be. Right now, I'm really quite satisfied to come here six days a week and have a fantasy life. It has all the good things in it and none of the bad things. … It gives you such a rainbow of colors to express yourself within, that I find it terribly rewarding and gratifying. I am never bored with the show."
George, like Doris, is married and has three children, and he too goes through drastic changes of attitude during the time period from 1951 to 1976. But while George wins the audience's respect and sympathy, Doris steals their hearts.
"I get out there and I feel such love. All of a sudden they begin to adore her. They're watching her spread her wings and finally fly. … The adultery is done with such taste. You see two people who really love their respective mates, and their children."
In her cozy backstage room at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, which is decorated with Christmas lights, Betsy demonstrates an overbubbling friendliness and an extremely fluent style of speech. An interview with her is both a pleasure and a challenge, for she talks about each subject with an enthusiasm that makes it hard for anyone to interrupt and go on to the next question.
Her memories of those panel shows? "You know, we used to do Secret right in this theatre. We must have done it here five, six, seven years easily. There are a lot of guys here now, on the backstage crew, who were here with Secret. It's nice to be working with them again. … But I'm not interested in the past. The past is an illusion, as is the future."
Betsy has been an off-and-on Westside resident ever since she first came to New York in 1951. When doing Same Time, Next Year she is subletting a friend's apartment on Riverside Drive. Her 16-year-old daughter frequently comes down from Connecticut to spend time with her on the West Side.
"I've lived on the East Side but my preference is the West Side. Let's face it, Broadway's on the West Side. Where Broadway is is where my heart is." Flowers by Edith (69th and B'way) is one of Betsy's best-loved Westside establishments. "I've become very good friends with her. I've gone to her house to parties."
In response to an obvious question, Betsy scolds gently: "Never ask an actress what she's going to do next. Opera stars say, 'You know, I've got this opera lined up, then this one, then this,' but an actress doesn't usually know. … I just hope that the next play I'm able to do will have a lot of humanity in it, like this one. It's not enough to get a bunch of laughs. You've got to be touched inside."