Oscar Actors: Saint, Eva Marie–Background, Career, Awards (Cum Advantage; Emmy Award)

Eva Marie Saint Career Summary:

My Oscar Book

Eva Marie Saint (born July 4, 1924) has enjoyed a career spanning over 70 years, during which she starred in Kazan’s On the Waterfront (1954), for which she won Best Supporting Actress Oscar, and in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959).

She received the BAFTA Award nominations for A Hatful of Rain (1957) and won a Primetime Emmy Award for the TV miniseries People Like Us (1990). Her film career also includes roles in Raintree County (1957), Exodus (1960), The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1965), Grand Prix (1966), Nothing in Common (1986), Because of Winn-Dixie (2005), Superman Returns (2006), and Winter’s Tale (2014).

Saint was born in Newark, New Jersey, to Quaker parents: Eva Marie (née Rice; 1896–1987) and John Merle Saint (1891–1965).

She attended Bethlehem Central High School in Delmar, New York, near Albany, graduating in 1942. She was inducted into the high school’s hall of fame in 2006.

She studied acting at Bowling Green State University and joined Delta Gamma Sorority; a theater on Bowling Green’s campus is named after her. She was an active member in the theater honorary fraternity, Theta Alpha Phi, and served as Secretary of the Bowling Green Student Government in 1944.

TV

Saint’s introduction to TV began as an NBC page. She appeared in the very early live NBC TV show Campus Hoopla in 1946–47. Her performances on this program are recorded on rare kinescope, and audio recordings of these telecasts are preserved in the Library of Congress. She also appeared in the Bonnie Maid’s Versa-Tile Varieties on NBC in 1949 as one of the original singing “Bonnie Maids” used in the live commercials.

She appeared in a 1947 Life Magazine special about TV, and also in a 1949 feature Life article about her as a struggling actress earning minimum amounts from early TV while trying to make ends meet in New York City. In the late 1940s, Saint continued to make her living by extensive work in radio and television. In 1953, she won 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, Saint was nominated for her first Emmy for “Best Actress In A Single Performance” on The Philco Television Playhouse, for playing the young mistress of middle-aged E. G. Marshall in Middle of the Night by Paddy Chayefsky. She won another Emmy nomination for the 1955 television musical version of Our Town, adapted from the Thornton Wilder play of the same name. Co-stars were Paul Newman and Frank Sinatra. Her success and acclaim in TV productions were of such a high level that “One slightly hyperbolic primordial TV critic dubbed her ‘the Helen Hayes of television.'”

Saint made her feature film debut in On the Waterfront (1954), starring Marlon Brando and directed by Kazan—a performance for which she won the Best Supporting Actress. Her role of Edie Doyle (whose brother’s death sets the film’s drama in motion), which she won over such leading contenders as Claire Trevor, Nina Foch, Katy Jurado and Jan Sterling, also earned her a British Academy of Film and Television Award nomination for “Most Promising Newcomer.”  The film was a major success and launched Saint’s movie career. She received $7,500 for the role.

In a 2000 interview, Saint recalled making the film, “Kazan put me in a room with Marlon Brando. He said ‘Brando is the boyfriend of your sister. You’re 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. I remained off balance for the whole shoot.”

She next appeared alongside Bob Hope in That Certain Feeling for which she received $50,000. She was then offered $100,000 to star in the lavish Civil War epic Raintree County (1957) with Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift.

She next starred with Don Murray in A Hatful of Rain, the pioneering drug-addiction drama, which although made later than Raintree Country was released earlier in 1957. She received a nomination for the “Best Foreign Actress” award from the BAFTA for her performance.

Hitchcock surprised many by choosing Saint over dozens of other candidates for the femme fatale 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,” including The 39 Steps, Young and Innocent, and Saboteur.

North by Northwest became a box-office hit and an influence on spy films for decades. The film ranks number 40 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 gained by Hitchcock’s decision to cut Saint’s waist-length blonde hair for the first time in her career. Hitchcock explained, “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 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 review of August 7, 1959, The NY Times critic Abe H. Weiler wrote, “In casting Eva Marie Saint as [Cary Grant’s] romantic vis-a-vis, 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 Grant and Hitchcock, Saint said, Cary 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.'” she also recalled it in 2010.

Although North by Northwest propelled her to the top ranks of stardom, Saint chose to limit her film work in order to spend time with her husband since 1951, director Jeffrey Hayden, and their two children.

In the 1960s, Saint continued to distinguish herself in high-profile and offbeat pictures. She co-starred with Paul Newman in Exodus (1960), Preminger’s  historical drama about the founding of the state of Israel adapted from the novel of the same name by Leon Uris.

She also co-starred with Warren Beatty, Karl Malden and Angela Lansbury as  tragic beauty in the drama All Fall Down (1962), based upon a novel by James Leo Herlihy and screenplay by William Inge, directed by John Frankenheimer.

She appeared with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in the melodrama The Sandpiper for Minnelli, and with James Garner in the World War II thriller 36 Hours (1965), directed by George Seaton.

Saint joined an all-star cast in the comedic satire, The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, directed by Norman Jewison, and the international racing drama, Grand Prix (1966) directed by Frankenheimer and presented in Cinerama.

Saint received some of her best reviews for her performance in Loving (1970), co-starring as the wife of George Segal. The movie was about commercial artist’s relationship with his wife and other women; it was critically acclaimed but did not have wide viewership.

Saint returned to TV and the stage in the 1980s. She appeared in a number of made-for-television films; she played the mother of Cybill Shepherd on the television series, Moonlighting, which lasted three years. She received Emmy nomination for the 1977 miniseries, How The West Was Won, and 1978 Emmy nomination for Taxi!!!

She was reunited with On the Waterfront co-star Karl Malden in the TV film Fatal Vision, as the wife of his character, as he investigated the murder of his daughter and granddaughters.

Saint returned to the big screen for the first time in over a decade in Nothing in Common (1986), in which she played the mother of Tom Hanks’s character; it was directed by Garry Marshall. Critics applauded her return to features.

After receiving 5 nominations, she won her first Emmy for the 1990 miniseries “People Like Us.”

She appeared in a number of television productions in the 1990s and was cast as the mother of radio producer, Roz Doyle, in a 1999 episode of the comedy series Frasier.

In 2000, Saint returned to feature films in I Dreamed of Africa with Kim Basinger. In 2005 she co-starred with Jessica Lange and Sam Shepard in Don’t Come Knocking. Also in 2005, she appeared in the family film Because of Winn-Dixie, co-starring AnnaSophia Robb, Jeff Daniels, and Cicely Tyson.

In 2006, Saint appeared in Superman Returns as Martha Kent, the adoptive mother of Superman, alongside Brandon Routh and a computer-generated performance from her On the Waterfront co-star Marlon Brando.

Saint has appeared in a number of television specials and documentaries, particularly since 2000. These include The Making of North by Northwest, which she narrated and hosted. In 2009, she made a rare public appearance at the 81st Academy Awards ceremony as a Best Supporting Actress presenter. In 2011, Saint participated in two screenings of North by Northwest with Robert Osborne. The films were shown in Seattle and Cleveland. Saint and Osborne participated in meet-and-greet sessions as well as a pre-movie question and answer session.

Saint has lent her voice to the 2012 Nickelodeon animated series The Legend of Korra, a sequel to the hit TV show Avatar: The Last Airbender, playing the now-elderly Katara, a main character from the original series.

In September 2012, she was cast as the adult version of Willa in the film adaptation of the novel Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin. The film was released on Valentine’s Day 2014.

Most recently, Saint appeared at the 2018 Oscar ceremonies.

She has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Saint married producer and director Jeffrey Hayden on October 28, 1951. They had two children together: son Darrell Hayden (born 1955) and daughter Laurette Hayden (born 1958). They were married for 65 years until Hayden’s death on December 24, 2016, at the age of 90.