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Eva Marie Saint

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Eva Marie Saint

Eva Marie Saint at the 1990 Annual Emmy Awards

Born

July 4 1924 (age 83)
Newark, New Jersey, U.S.

Other name(s)

Eve Marie Saint

Spouse(s)

Jeffrey Hayden 1951-present

Awards
Academy Awards
Best Supporting Actress 1954 On the Waterfront
Emmy Awards
Outstanding Supporting Actress - Miniseries or Movie 1990 People Like Us

Eva Marie Saint (born July 4, 1924) is an Academy Award-winning American actress. She has starred on Broadway, in films and on television beginning in the 1950s.

1 Biography
2 Awards
3 Filmography
4 Television Work
5 Notes
6 External links

Biography

Early life

Saint was born in Newark, New Jersey but attended Bethlehem Central High School in Delmar, NY, graduating in 1942. Eva was inducted into the high school's hall of fame in 2006. She studied acting at Bowling Green State University, while a member of Delta Gamma Sorority. There is also a theatre on Bowling Green campus named after her. She was also an active member in the theater honorary fraternity, Theta Alpha Phi.

Early television career

In the late '40s, she began doing extensive work in radio and television before winning the Drama Critics Award for her Broadway stage role in the Horton Foote play The Trip to Bountiful (1953), in which she co-starred with such formidable actors as Lillian Gish and Jo Van Fleet. In 1955, she was nominated for her first Emmy for "Best Actress In A Single Performance" on The Philco Television Playhouse for the playing the young mistress of middle-aged E. G. Marshall in Middle of the Night by Paddy Chayevsky. She won another Emmy nomination for the 1955 television musical version of the Thornton Wilder classic play Our Town with co-stars Paul Newman (in his only musical role) and Frank Sinatra. Her success and acclaim were of such a high level that the young Saint earned the nickname "the Helen Hayes of television."

Film debut

Saint's first feature motion picture role was in On the Waterfront (1954), directed by Elia Kazan and starring Marlon Brando — a smart, sympathetic, and emotionally-charged role for which she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Her performance as Edie Doyle (whose brother Joey's death sets the film's drama in motion) which she won over such leading contenders as Grace Kelly, Janice Rule, and Elizabeth Montgomery, also earned her a British Academy of Film and Television Award for "Most Promising Newcomer." In his New York Times review, film critic Bosley Crowther wrote:

"In casting Eva Marie Saint — a newcomer to movies from TV and Broadway — Mr. Kazan has come up with a pretty and blond artisan who does not have to depend on these attributes. Her parochial school training is no bar to love with the proper stranger. Amid scenes of carnage, she gives tenderness and sensitivity to genuine romance."^[1]

In a 2000 interview in Premiere magazine, Saint recalled making the hugely influential film:

“

[Elia] Kazan put me in a room with Marlon Brando. He said, 'Brando is the boyfriend of your sister. You're a Catholic girl and not used to being with a young man. Don't let him in the door under any circumstances.' I don't know what he told Marlon; you'll have to ask him — good luck! [Brando] came in and started teasing me. He put me off-balance. And I remained off-balance for the whole shoot.

”

The watershed success of the film launched Saint into many of the best known films of her early screen career. They include starring with Don Murray in the powerful and pioneering drug-addiction drama, A Hatful of Rain (1957), for which she won the "Best Foreign Actress" from the British Academy of Film and Television, and the lavish Civil War epic Raintree County, opposite Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift.

Hitchcock blonde

Saint in North by Northwest, 1959

Legendary director Alfred Hitchcock surprised many by choosing the stately and serious Saint over dozens of other candidates for the femme fatale role in what was to become a suspense classic North by Northwest (1959) with Cary Grant and James Mason. Written by Ernest Lehman, the film updated and expanded upon the director's early "wrong man" spy adventures of the '30s, '40s, and '50s, including The 39 Steps, Young and Innocent, and Foreign Correspondent. North by Northwest became a box-office hit and an influence on spy films for decades. The film ranks number forty on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 Greatest American Movies of All Time. At the time of the film's production, much publicity was garnered by Hitchcock's decision to cut Saint's waist-length blonde hair for the first time in her career. Hitchcock explained at the time, "Short hair gives Eva a more exotic look, in keeping with her role of the glamorous woman of my story. I wanted her dressed like a kept woman – smart, simple, subtle and quiet. In other words, anything but the bangles and beads type." The director also worked with Saint to make her voice lower and huskier and even personally chose costumes for her during a shopping trip to Bergdorf Goodman in New York City. The change in Saint's screen persona, coupled with her adroit performance as a seductive woman of mystery who keeps Cary Grant (and the audience) off-balance, was widely heralded. In his New York Times review of August 7, 1959. critic Bosley Crowther wrote, "In casting Eva Marie Saint as [Cary Grant's] romantic vis-a-vis, Mr. Hitchcock has plumbed some talents not shown by the actress heretofore. Although she is seemingly a hard, designing type, she also emerges both the sweet heroine and a glamorous charmer." In 2000, recalling her experience making the picture with Cary Grant and Hitchcock, Saint said, "[Grant] would say, "See, Eva Marie, you don't have to cry in a movie to have a good time. Just kick up your heels and have fun." Hitchcock said, "I don't want you to do a sink-to-sink movie again, ever. You've done these black-and-white movies like On the Waterfront. It's drab in that tenement house. Women go to the movies, and they've just left the sink at home. They don't want to see you at the sink." I said, "I can't promise you that, Hitch, because I love those dramas."

Mid-career

Although North by Northwest might have propelled her to the very top ranks of stardom, she elected to limit her film work in order to spend time with her husband since 1951, director Jeffrey Hayden, and their two children. Nevertheless, in the 1960s, Saint continued to distinguish herself in both high-profile and more offbeat motion pictures, including co-starring again with Paul Newman in the historical drama about the founding of the state of Israel Exodus (1960), directed by Otto Preminger. She also co-starred with Warren Beatty, Karl Malden, and Angela Lansbury as a tragic beauty in the 1962 drama All Fall Down. Based upon a novel by James Leo Herlihy and a screenplay by William Inge, the film was directed by John Frankenheimer. She was also seen with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in the highly-publicized melodrama The Sandpiper for Vincente Minnelli, and with James Garner in the World War II thriller 36 Hours, directed by George Seaton. She was among the all-star casts in the comedic satire The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming, directed by Norman Jewison and the international racing drama Grand Prix presented in Cinerama and directed by John Frankenheimer. Although she was announced as the leading lady opposite Steve McQueen in director Norman Jewison's ultra-stylish romantic caper film The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), the meteoric rise of newcomer Faye Dunaway, who was cast instead, cost Saint a rare glamorous and sexy role. In 1970, she received some of the best reviews of her film career for Loving, in which she co-starred as the wife of George Segal in a critically-acclaimed but underseen film drama about a commercial artist's relationship with his wife and the other women in his life. Because of the mostly second-rate film roles that came her way in the 1970s, Saint returned to television and the stage in the 1980s. She has appeared in a number of made-for-TV movies, played the mother of Cybill Shepherd on the hit television series Moonlighting, winning an Emmy nomination for the 1977 miniseries How The West Was Won, a 1978 Emmy nomination for Taxi and an Emmy in 1990 for the mini-series People Like Us.

Later career

In 2000, she co-starred with Kim Basinger in the motion picture I Dreamed of Africa, with Jessica Lange for director Wim Wenders in Don't Come Knocking (2005) written by Sam Shepard, and in the heart-tugging family film Because of Winn-Dixie. In 2006, Saint once again became a household name by playing Martha Kent, the adoptive mother of Superman, in Superman Returns. She has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for motion pictures at 6624 Hollywood Blvd., and one for television at 6730 Hollywood Blvd.

Awards

Awards
Preceded by Donna Reed From Here to Eternity	Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress 1954 On the Waterfront	Succeeded by Jo Van Fleet East of Eden
Preceded by Colleen Dewhurst Those She Left Behind	Emmy Award Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie 1990 People Like Us	Succeeded by Ruby Dee Decoration Day