Eva Marie Saint, ‘North by Northwest’ and ‘On the Waterfront’ Legend, Dies at 102

Few performers could say they won an Academy Award for their very first movie. Eva Marie Saint, the actress behind the classics ‘On the Waterfront’ and ‘North by Northwest’, did exactly that, and over the next 7 decades she became one of the last links to Hollywood’s golden age.

Born on July 4, 1924, in Newark, New Jersey, Saint grew up in Delmar, a small town near Albany, New York. She originally planned to become a third-grade teacher like her mother, until she tried out for a play at Bowling Green State University in Ohio and won the lead role.

Now Hollywood is mourning her loss. Saint died of natural causes on Tuesday, October 6, at her home in Los Angeles at the age of 102, a death confirmed by family representative Jeff Sanderson.

According to People, she died surrounded by family and loved ones. Saint had celebrated her 102nd birthday in July, and until her death she held the title of oldest living Academy Award winner.

She was part of a very small group of centenarian Oscar winners, a club previously limited to George Burns, Luise Rainer and Olivia de Havilland. On reaching 100, she told People that she didn’t feel her age and credited her longevity to staying active and happy.

Saint’s path to stardom ran through the Actors Studio, where she auditioned before Elia Kazan and was accepted. She credited Lee Strasberg with helping her overcome her shyness.

Kazan then invited her to try out for ‘On the Waterfront’ by improvising a scene with Marlon Brando, in which she had to stop a young man from entering her apartment. She won the role of Edie Doyle, the love interest of Brando’s troubled Terry Malloy.

The 1954 drama earned 12 Oscar nominations and won 8, including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress for Saint. She was pregnant with her first child when Frank Sinatra handed her the award, and her son Darrell was born just 2 days later.

Instead of capitalizing on her overnight fame, Saint refused studio contracts and took time off to get to know her newborn son. She also turned down major projects like ‘The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit’, ‘Summer and Smoke’ and ‘The Rainmaker’.

Her husband, director Jeffrey Hayden, convinced her to take the role that would define her screen image. In Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 thriller ‘North by Northwest’, she played Eve Kendall, a mysterious spy who seduces Cary Grant’s Roger Thornhill but ends up falling for him.

Critics have noted how Saint layered the part with intelligence and subtlety, moving beyond Hitchcock’s usual icy blonde. Remarkably, she was filming scenes on a mock-up of Mount Rushmore just 2 weeks after giving birth to her second child.

Saint followed up with films including ‘A Hatful of Rain’, which earned her a BAFTA nomination, ‘Exodus’ and ‘Grand Prix’. Later, television audiences knew her as Cybill Shepherd’s mother on ‘Moonlighting’, and she also won an Emmy.

A new generation discovered her as Martha Kent, Superman’s adoptive mother, in 2006’s ‘Superman Returns’. She later appeared alongside Colin Farrell in the fantasy film ‘Winter’s Tale’, and she has 2 stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for film and one for television.

She never stopped honoring her classic work. Saint hosted the TCM documentary ‘The Making of North by Northwest’ in 2000 and returned to the Oscars in 2009 to present Best Supporting Actress, some 55 years after her own win.

Saint married Hayden in 1951, and the couple stayed together for 65 years until his death in 2016. They had 2 children, Darrell and Laurette. She was known for living a discreet life, yet her influence on screen acting remains enormous. Her death closes one of the final chapters of Hollywood’s golden era.

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