Emily Fletcher, the lady made famous by the line, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up,“ was found in her dilapidated home after a long and tortuous 20 years of numerous abandoned attempts to make it to the couch. She was discovered by vandals who came to rip out her copper plumbing three days before her 95th birthday.
“It’s such a relief this ordeal is finally over,” exclaimed an exasperated Fletcher. All I can remember is after the film crews left that day they didn’t leave me a free Medical Alert bracelet, nor give me a hand up, and I laid there ever since. Thank goodness those nice young gentlemen put me in a wheelbarrow and set me out by the curb where I could flag somebody down. I told them they could have whatever they wanted, and from the looks of things they took me up on it.“
Indeed, the company, LifeCall, that went out of business in 1990, managed to dodge payment to Mrs. Fletcher all those years while cashing in on her frail pleas for help that became a cultural touchstone.
Mrs. Fletcher is now residing in a nursing home outside the tiny town of Cut ’n’ Shoot, Texas where her celebrity status has quickly worn thin with the minimum wage help. When last seen, she was laying on the floor, hollering for something or other, while her panic button was placed conveniently out of reach.