A Fond Farewell to a Lovely, Serene Screen Icon, Eva Marie Saint

                One of the legendary leading ladies of the Silver Screen, the talented and beautiful Eva Marie Saint passed away on October 6^th at age 102. A native of New Jersey, Saint developed an interest in acting early on and, after college, worked on honing her craft via early live television in the late 1940s, gaining her first exposure in Life magazine, who profiled her efforts as a young aspiring actress in New York. Greater success came with a 1953 live televised appearance opposite Lilliah Gish in The Trip to Bountiful, which led to a brief Broadway production of the play that gained Saint considerable praise. Following this, Saint achieved one of filmdom’s most impressive debuts with her intelligent, persuasive work opposite Marlon Brando in one of the decade’s most esteemed movies, 1954’s On the Waterfront, which immediately established Saint as an actor gifted with intuitive skill on camera, while also winning Saint her Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

                Following this triumph, Saint displayed a knack for carefully balancing quality projects while raising a family with husband Jeffrey Hayden, with whom Saint shared one of the most successful marriages, from 1951 until Hayden’s death in 2016. In 1955 she appeared on television opposite Paul Newman and Frank Sinatra (introducing “Love and Marriage”) in a musical version of “Our Town,” then the next year showed comic flair costarring with Bob Hope in one of his best and most underrated vehicles, That Certain Feeling. 1957 proved to be a benchmark year in films for Saint, with fine work in MGM’s grand-scale Raintree Country with Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift, and award-worthy dramatic work in the screen adaptation of the hit Broadway drama A Hatful of Rain. Saint would then close out the decade with her most famous role this side of Waterfront as Eve Kendall, taking her place alongside other “Hitchcock Blondes” of note in one of the Master of Suspense’s most entertaining diversions, North by Northwest, wherein she shared several seductive interludes with Cary Grant at his late-career peak.

                After the major success of Northwest, Saint’s run of top-profile movies continued in the 1960s, starting with Otto Preminger’s all-star epic Exodus and including other major hits such as The Sandpiper, The Russians Are Coming, The Russians are Coming and Grand Prix, while Saint offered compelling performances in smaller-scale works such as 1962’s fascinating All Fall Down, with Saint at her most vulnerable and emotionally compelling, and the intriguing thriller 36 Hours opposite James Garner. Later quality roles came with incisive work in 1970’s Loving and 1986’s Nothing in Common opposite Jackie Gleason and Tom Hanks, as well as an Emmy win for 1990’s People Like Us, and via a return to the stage starting in the early 1970’s, which afforded Saint the opportunity to take on choice parts in top fare such as the The Country Girl and Death of a Salesman. Saint would make her final impact in a large-scale movie as Martha Kent in 2006’s Superman Returns before her touching appearance in her final film, 2014’s Winter’s Tale.

                As a Santa Monica local, Saint would frequently appear at showings of her films in her later years, allowing the author to see the Hollywood legend graciously offering insightful, funny and absorbing stories concerning her life and career on several occasions, wherein Ms. Saint always came across as friendly, down-to-earth and relatable to the enthralled audiences. I was able to film a great 2010 interview at a showing of North by Northwest here, and afterwards corresponded a couple of times with her, gaining autographed movie stills on one occasion, and a nice note from Ms. Saint later after I wrote to her concerning a screening of That Certain Feeling that she attended (the movie went over great with the engaged audience). I also created a tribute video to her that can be viewed here. A gifted thespian of class and distinction, Ms. Saint’s superb work on screen will endure as long as movies do- R.I.P. to a true cinema legend, Eva Marie Saint.