Eva Marie Saint, the elegant actor known for her first Oscar-winning film, “On the Waterfront,” and for her role as a sultry spy in another 1950s film classic, “North by Northwest,” died Tuesday. He was 102 years old.
Saint died of natural causes at his home in Los Angeles.
Plucked from the Broadway stage by director Elia Kazan to play Marlon Brando’s love interest in the 1954 film “On the Waterfront,” Saint emerged as a star.
After Cary Grant dangled him from Mount Rushmore in Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller “North by Northwest,” he went on to appear opposite some of Hollywood’s biggest heartthrobs; these included Paul Newman in “Exodus” (1960), Yves Montand in “Grand Prix” (1966) and Gregory Peck in “The Stalking Moon” (1969).
Film critic Leonard Maltin wrote in his “Film Encyclopedia” that while she was poised for stardom as a “radiant blonde leading lady” in the 1950s, she “found few vehicles worthy of her talents.”
But Saint offered another, more personal reason for his career trajectory.
“I was having kids, I was turning down offers, and my agent was telling me, ‘Eva Marie, you’ll never be a superstar,’ and I said, ‘I don’t want to be a superstar,'” she often recounted.
He found regular work in television from the 1970s onwards, when his film roles diminished (he made only about 20 films in more than 50 years).
“As I got older, there weren’t as many roles,” he said in a 1990 Times interview. “I moved into television and I am extremely happy.”
Eva Marie Saint and her husband Jeffrey Hayden in Los Angles in 1959.
(Getty)
She had a recurring role as Cybill Shepherd’s mother on the 1980s series “Moonlighting” and received an Emmy Award for playing a rich, self-centered woman who rejects her daughter in the 1990 miniseries “People Like Us.”
More recently, in 2005, he starred in “Don’t Come Knocking” opposite Jessica Lange and Sam Shepard, the same year he made “Because of Winn-Dixie” with Jeff Daniels and Cicely Tyson. In 2006, she played the Man of Steel’s stepmother in “Superman Returns.” This year, he had a brief role in Akiva Goldsman’s romantic fantasy film “The Winter’s Tale”.
Before coming to Hollywood in the 1950s, Saint appeared in TV series, including playing a young woman who befriends an older woman (Lillian Gish) in Horton Foote’s “The Trip to Bountiful.”
When the theatrical version of “Bountiful” opened on Broadway in 1953, both women starred in the lead roles and developed a close friendship. After seeing Saint’s stage performance, director Kazan cast her as Brando’s tough girlfriend Edie Doyle in “On the Waterfront.”
Saint later said that Brando was the best actor he had ever worked with. She described him as a “prince” and “just a genius” who put his coat around his shoulders to protect him from the cold while filming scenes on the beach in Hoboken, NJ.
“It was really interesting working with him because little things would happen and your reaction would change when he said his lines, so it was always fresh,” he told NBC News in 2006.
After accepting her Oscar for the film’s supporting actress, nine-months-pregnant Saint kissed the statuette and joked, “I could have the baby here.”
Two days after the Academy Awards ceremony in 1955, Saint gave birth to a son, the first of her two children. Three weeks later, the actress began working on an episode of “North by Northwest,” which she called “the sexy spy woman” and said she loved.
He said in a 2000 interview on National Public Radio that Hitchcock gave him little direction as an actor, but said: “‘Keep your voice down, don’t use your hands… and look straight into Cary Grant’s eyes the whole time,’ which wasn’t difficult at all.”
The exciting Mount Rushmore scene was filmed in a miniature version of the monument. When Saint slipped and injured his arm, the Method actor said he decided to use the pain and can be seen rubbing his elbow in the film.
But she said she believed it after Hitchcock cast her to play elegant spy Eve Kendall, calling her “sexy, dangerous, mysterious and alluring,” even though her TV director husband had been telling her so for years.
Born July 4, 1924, in Newark, NJ, she grew up near Albany, NY, the youngest of two daughters of John Merle Saint and the former Eva Marie Rice.
His mother was a teacher and his Quaker father was an executive at B.F. Goodrich Co. His sister, Adelaide, became a research chemist.
Saint switched from teacher training to majoring in drama at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.
At the encouragement of a friend, he tried out for the role of a lively Hollywood star in a college play; this role was so different from the extremely shy Aziz that “I don’t even think the dean knew I was there,” he told the Richmond, Va., Times Dispatch in 1996.
With a passion for acting, she started modeling and doing commercials. The first one was for Keds sneakers.
After graduating from college in 1946, he lived with his family on Long Island, New York, appearing in commercials and acting in radio dramas. Eventually Saint found steady work on radio serials and his first television series.
In 1948, he was taking classes at the Actors Studio in New York and met Jeffrey Hayden, who went on to have a long career as a TV director. After they married in 1951, he advised her to take on more prominent roles, The Times reported in 1978.
According to the 1978 article, “His rare combination of fire and ice, youthful innocence and professional skill led to leading roles in the live TV series of the 1950s, ‘Studio One,’ ‘Kraft Theater’ and ‘Philco-Goodyear Playhouse.’
Raising her children on a sprawling farmhouse in Mandeville Canyon, she was selective about the roles she took on. After her daughter and son grew up, Saint and her husband downsized to a stylish, art-filled apartment in Westwood in the mid-1970s.
The couple developed an enduring love for Willa Cather’s writing in 1990 when they were invited to give a reading at the author’s childhood home in Nebraska. Starting that evening, they prepared a show featuring Cather’s works that she had been on the road for decades.
“Family always came first,” he told Moving Pictures Magazine in 2006. While she was working on a deal to appear in “Exodus,” she told director Otto Preminger that she would not leave her two young children behind.
“I said to Otto, ‘I’m going to have to bring my family from Pennsylvania, Jeff and his mom are coming too,’ and Otto said, ‘Looks like you’re going to start your own Exodus.’”
Saint’s surviving children are Darrell and Laurette; four grandchildren, Eli, Tyler, Molly and Stella; and two great-grandchildren, Arlo and Finley. Her husband died in 2016.