She walks toward the window. "I love this view. The park is different every time of the year. Now it's all covered with snow. Pretty soon the buds will be all over the trees." She smiles contentedly. "I really think that if I had to leave the West Side I'd leave New York. Because to me, this is New York." _Hannah and Her Sisters_. ******** 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.