Betty Anderson is a fictional character in the novel Peyton Place, written by Grace Metalious, as well as the subsequent films and TV series based on the novel.

In a later TV movie, Murder in Peyton Place, Janet Margolin performed the role of Betty.

Betty is the daughter of millworker John and Berit Anderson, and lived in the small community of Peyton Place.

For a planned but never written third book of Peyton Place, author Grace Metalious considered depicting Betty as the mother of Rodney, Jr., as well as her relationship with her father-in-law.

She is invited to Allison's birthday party, where she pours alcohol in the drinks, dims all the lights, and starts heavily making out with Rodney.

During the summer, Rodney convinces her to give him another chance, and they go skinny dipping at a nearby lake, where they are spotted by a local gossip.

This devastating news allows Betty to make peace with Rodney's father, who until then had never spoken a positive word about her.

[9] After she was informed that her father was taken into a sanatorium, Betty returned to Peyton Place and granted Rodney an annulment on condition that Leslie paid George's medical bills.

[10] Drama quickly continued as Betty found out that Leslie had hired a private investigator to spy on her in New York.

Meanwhile, her father returned home from the sanitarium, but Betty's delightment was short lived, because George turned out to have lost his mind and - after an almost fatal confrontation with Martin Peyton and shoot-out with Elliot Carson - he was sent away forever.

[13] She even broke into hospital paper files to find any sort of information which could help Rodney, though she was caught by Miss Choate and got fired.

Betty accepted his job offer as his personal assistant, thereby endangering Hannah's position as his maid.

Betty told her mother that she did not carry any romantic feelings for Steven, accepted a marriage proposal nevertheless because she was encouraged to do so by Rodney.

Seeing her marriage being torn apart by this secret, Betty wanted to come clean with Steven, but Peyton and Hannah forced her to stay silent.

The soap opera was cancelled before this plot was finished, leaving it unknown to the viewer whether Betty and Steven married.

In the first TV movie, Murder in Peyton Place (1977), Betty was married to a man named David Roerick, with whom she lived in another city.

When it turned out that Rodney and Allison died in the car crash, Betty extended her stay in Peyton Place, which worried her husband David.

Along with a group of old friends, including Norman Harrington and Steven Cord, Betty suspected that the couple was murdered.

Betty's investigation was cut short when David asked her to move back in with him, after which she left town.

During the second reunion movie, Peyton Place: The Next Generation (1985), Betty was engaged to a man named Dorian Blake, and had a teenage son, Dana, from her marriage with Rodney Harrington.

A condition of owning the mansion was coping with Peyton's faithful housekeeper Hannah Cord, who Betty greatly disliked.

During a visit to Dr. Michael Rossi, it is revealed that Dana was conceived through a one-night stand with Steven during her marriage to Rodney.

Dorian admits that he hit Megan and also raped Allison - who was recently strangled to death - twenty years earlier.

In a late 1965 interview, the actress said about her role: Parkins was the only female star to remain with the series through its entire run (1964–1969).

In 1966, she was nominated for an Emmy Award as Best Actress in a Lead Role in a Dramatic Series, but lost to Barbara Stanwyck for The Big Valley.

About losing the award, on her 22nd birthday, Parkins told the press: Eventually shedding her "other side of the tracks" image, Betty endured many of the trials and tribulations of soap opera life.

The character achieved such popularity that when the show ended its run, producer Paul Monash developed a spin-off series, The Girl from Peyton Place, for Parkins.