LOS ANGELES– Eva Marie Saint, the pale, slender actress who won an Oscar for her first film, “On the Waterfront,” and who starred opposite Cary Grant in the Alfred Hitchcock thriller “North by Northwest,” has died. She was 102 years old.
Saint, whose acting work lasted into her 90s, died Tuesday at her home in Los Angeles, family representative Jeff Sanderson confirmed.
Saint had one of the most spectacular debuts in Hollywood history, as Terry Malloy’s love interest tormented by Marlon Brando in “On the Waterfront,” and his first trip to the Oscars was also memorable. Pregnant with her first child, Saint accepted her Oscar from Frank Sinatra and smilingly whispered a unique winner’s speech: “I think I might have the baby here.” (Her son, Darrell, was born two days later.)
The award for the 1954 classic made her an instant star, but she soon stunned Hollywood with a firm independence that would mark her career. She turned down offers of studio contracts and refused any chance to follow up on her big success, explaining that she was taking time off to get to know her new son. (A daughter, Laurette, was born in 1958.)
During her first decade in Hollywood, Saint appeared in only seven films. She declined high-profile productions like “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit” with Gregory Peck, “Summer and Smoke” with Laurence Harvey and “The Rainmaker” with Burt Lancaster. She credited her husband, director and director Jeffrey Hayden, with persuading her to star in Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest,” the classic 1959 thriller in which Saint plays a spy who seduces Grant, but ultimately falls in love with him.
“I remember very clearly him saying to me, ‘Honey, I think you should find a quiet place. I’m going to take care of the kids and I want you to really think about that and reread that script,” she told Vanity Fair in 2014. “He was so right. And that’s what husbands are for.”
Instead of being deterred by his selectivity, studios continued to offer him leading roles in films such as “Exodus” (with Newman), “Raintree County” (Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift) and “All Fall Down,” with Warren Beatty.
She moved more toward television in the 1970s and enjoyed a resurgence in popularity in the 1980s as Cybill Shepherd’s mother in the hit sitcom “Moonlighting” and as Tom Hanks’ mother in the film comedy “Nothing in Common.” She won an Emmy for the 1990 miniseries “People Like Us” and has had roles in 21st-century films such as “Because of Winn-Dixie,” “Superman Returns” and “Winter’s Tale,” adapted from Mark Helprin’s novel of the same name. In 2021, she played Marisa Tomei’s aunt in the brief audio play “The Bus Ride”, part of “The Pack Podcast”.
Saint was married to Hayden for 65 years, until his death in 2016.
When Saint first emerged into the public consciousness, many thought her theatrical-sounding name must have been invented. She was born on July 4, 1924 in Newark, New Jersey. The family moved to Delmar, a small town near Albany, New York, where her father was a manager of the Goodrich Rubber Co.. Eva’s goal was to become a third-grade teacher like her mother, but at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, she tried out for a play and won the lead role.
After graduating, she lived with her parents and began looking for acting work in Manhattan. After an unsuccessful year, she landed a role as a telephone operator on a radio series and soon worked regularly on soap operas and nighttime dramas, appearing for two years as Claudia on “One Man’s Family.” Network television was booming in the early 1950s, and its appearance and sense of drama made it a favorite of actors and producers.
A critical turning point in Saint’s career came when she auditioned in front of Elia Kazan and was accepted into the Actors Studio, which shaped a generation of method acting stars. She credited acting coach Lee Strasberg for helping her overcome her shyness.
“Lee Strasberg, when he got to know me a little bit, gave me a scene to do where I had to cry in front of my peers,” she told the Santa Barbara Independent in 2009. “I worried about it, I worked on it, I tried to use what I was learning in the studio. I finally did the scene, and I cried, and my peers were crying with me. It was just an incredible moment for me.”
Saint was rejected for the sole female role in the play “Mister Roberts”, but was hired to understudy the chosen actor, Jocelyn Brando, Marlon’s sister. In six frustrating months, Saint was never able to replace Brando. She finally reached Broadway in “A Trip to Bountiful,” which she had performed on television.
Kazan invited her to try out for the female lead in “On the Waterfront” by improvising a scene with Brando. She was told to try to stop a young man from entering her apartment. She told the Los Angeles Times in 2001: “All I know is Marlon walked through the door and turned on the music. We started dancing. He flicked my skirt. Kazan saw the sparks fly, and that’s how I got the part.”
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Thomas, a former Associated Press Hollywood correspondent who died in 2014, was the primary writer of this obituary.
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This story has been corrected to show that Saint and Hayden were married for 65 years, not 55.
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