Eva Marie Saint, star of ‘On the Waterfront’ and ‘North by Northwest,’ dies at 102

Academy Award-winning actress Eva Marie Saint, who starred in classics such as “On the Waterfront” and “North by Northwest” but also shook up Hollywood conventions throughout her long career, has died. She was 102 years old.

Her publicist, Jeff Sanderson, said she died of natural causes at her home in Los Angeles, surrounded by family and loved ones.

A regal-looking blonde who ricocheted from roles as sultry spies to Southern belles and Superman’s stepmother, Saint made her film debut opposite Marlon Brando In Elia Kazan“At the water’s edge” (1954). Saint played Edie Doyle, whose brother was murdered by thugs working for a mob boss running a longshore union; his character becomes involved with Brando’s pugilistic dockworker, Terry Malloy.

His performance earned Saint one of the film’s eight Academy Awards. (She was only the fourth person to win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her first film.) The night she received her award, she was visibly pregnant. “I could have the baby here!” she said. (Her son, Darrell, was born two days later.)

Saint married director-producer Jeffrey Hayden in 1951 and the couple remained together for 65 years until his death in 2016. They had two children. Saint had made it clear that family was more important to her than her career.

“I had an agent once who wanted me to do a lot more films” she told CBS’ “Sunday Morning” in 2014. “I said, ‘I can’t. I can only do one a year, if that. I have kids, young kids.” And he said, ‘Well, I guess you won’t be a superstar.’ And I said, ‘Well, I guess not.'”

And what happened to this agent? “I fired him,” she said.

She maintained the limits she had imposed on herself when it came to films; she also brought her extended family to the set of Otto Preminger’s “Exodus” while filming in Cyprus and Israel. Although she did not produce films, Saint followed her Oscar win by appearing in many high-profile projects, including “A Hatful of Rain,” “Raintree County,” “All Fall Down,” “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming,” “Grand Prix” and the eponymous television miniseries based on “How the West Was Won.” She also received five Emmy nominations and won for the 1990 TV movie “People Like Us.” At age 97, she appeared in a series of podcasts.

But perhaps her most memorable performance is that of Eve Kendall, a mysterious blonde who crosses paths with Cary Grantis Roger Thornhill as he flees from murderous spies in 1959. Alfred Hitchcock thriller “From the north to the northwest”. Thornhill doesn’t realize that Kendall herself is a secret agent.

Saint said Hitchcock’s directive for her to play a sexy spy was simple: “Three things: lower your voice. Don’t use your hands. And look directly into Cary Grant’s eyes at all times,” she recalled.

Hitchcock had a reputation for being harsh on young actresses, but not Saint. “I thought he was a wonderful director, a gentleman, funny, courteous, but there are other actresses who don’t feel the same way. I don’t even want to hear stories about him,” she said.

Although playing a femme fatale was new to her, Saint said she wasn’t surprised when watching her performance. “No. I don’t think the actors are surprised,” she said. “I mean, that’s what we do.”

“Too innocent”

Born July 4, 1924, in Newark, New Jersey, Saint grew up in upstate New York and attended Bowling Green State University in Ohio (where she was “Sweater Queen”). Initially planning to become a teacher, Saint began acting in student productions and changed her career direction.

Moving to New York, she trained in Actors studio with famed acting coach Lee Strasberg, and was hired for a production of “Mister Roberts” alongside Henry Fonda. But she was let go by director Joshua Logan; she discovered it was because she was deemed “too innocent”. The actor who replaced her was Jocelyn Brando (Marlon’s sister).

Crushed, she was nonetheless determined not to let it dissuade her from pursuing an acting career.

In her early days, she told Variety in 2021, Saint and another actress spoke in an invented language while riding the subway. “We were so frustrated about not finding work, so I suggested we do something to get people to notice us,” she said. “When we started chatting, we had a small audience. People would put down their newspapers and ask each other: what language is this?”

Saint established herself in the early days of live television as a dramatic actress in plays on “Studio One,” “Goodyear Television Playhouse,” “GE True Theater” and “Philco Television Playhouse.” She starred in the first television production of Horton Foote’s “The Trip to Bountiful” and repeated the role on Broadway, where she was spotted by Kazan, the director of “Waterfront.”

He asked Saint to audition opposite Brando in an improvised scene. Upon entering the room, Brando turned on a radio and the two began dancing. “He did something to flip my skirt and I was so embarrassed that I cried a little afterward,” Saint told the Santa Barbara Independent in 2010. “But Kazan saw the chemistry and he saw that it could work for the movie.”

She said it was wonderful to work with Brando.

“What was a little scary about him, and what worked for me in the film, was his perception of people so enthusiastically,” she said. “He could look at someone or talk with them and hone in on what that person was. And he would mention it about the people around us. So sometimes I would sit there and think, ‘If he knows this about this person, he must know more about me than I know about myself.’ It made me a little self-conscious, but I used it in the movie. He had traveled the world and I was sheltered at home, so I used that. “

After “Waterfont”, Saint appeared on television in a musical version of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” with Paul Newman And Frank Sinatraand also appeared on stage in numerous theater productions.

But Hollywood beckoned him, and the Oscar winner starred alongside actors such as Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor (“Raintree County”), Paul Newman (“Exodus”), Warren Beatty (“All fall”), James Garner (“36 Hours”), Richard Burton and Taylor (“Le Bécasseau”), Yves Montand (“Grand Prix”), Gregory Peck (“The Stalking Moon”), Bob Hope (“This certain feeling”, “Cancel my reservation”), and Tom Hanks (“Nothing in common”).

Other film credits include “Because of Winn-Dixie”, “Don’t Come Knocking” (with Sam Shepard), “Superman Returns” (in the role of Martha Kent) and “Winter’s Tale”.

On television, she appeared in “The Best Little Girl in the World”, “Moonlighting”, the two-hander film “Taxi!!” (opposite Martin Sheen), “The Last Days of Patton” (with George C. Scott), “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” “My Antonia,” the 1996 TV miniseries “Titanic,” and “Frasier.”

And in recent years, Saint has been broadcasting podcasts. She played Marisa Tomei’s aunt in “The Bus Ride”, a short play broadcast on “The Pack Podcast”. She said the fiery character, written by Eugene Pack, was compelling, calling his work “so honest.”

“I’ve lived long enough to know what’s honest and what’s not, and Eugene’s plays are,” she said. “They’re charming, they’re positive, but they’re not saccharine.”

Saint is survived by his two children, Darrell and Laurette, four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, Sanderson’s statement said.