Althouse: Goodbye to Eva Marie Saint

October 6, 2026

Goodbye to Eva Marie Saint — she was 102.

Here's the NYT obituary: "Eva Marie Saint, Oscar Winner for ‘On the Waterfront,’ Is Dead at 102/A luminous beauty with dramatic depth, she brought a layered intensity to harrowing roles and seduced Cary Grant in the romantic thriller 'North by Northwest.'"

21 comments:

RCOCEAN II said...: How sad. One of my favorites. She always seemed level-headed, smart, and classy. 102 is a ripe old age.; 10/6/26, 8:03 PM
RCOCEAN II said...: Being the cool classy dame with Cary Grant is quite a stretch from the working class girl with Brando in "on the waterfront". She had range.; 10/6/26, 8:04 PM
Lazarus said...: I for one will miss her many posts here.; 10/6/26, 8:05 PM
James K said...: Lazarus wins the thread.; 10/6/26, 8:22 PM
Eva Marie said...: “I for one will miss her many posts here.”
No such luck.; 10/6/26, 9:18 PM
Big Mike said...: @Althouse, are you going to link her name to Hastert and Bakker?; 10/6/26, 10:11 PM
Eva Marie said...: From North by Northwest
"How does a girl like you get to be a girl like you?"
"Lucky, I guess."
“Her first TV gig was on NBC’s “The Borden Show..” (1947) She was hired to simply supply applause off-camera and called her parents to tell them the good news. “After the show, they called me and mom said, ‘Honey, we just love the show, and Dad thinks he heard you applauding.”’
She won an Oscar for her very first film, then turned down superstardom to raise her kids, stayed married 65 years, and was still working in her 90s.
A charmer who lived a charmed life. RIP; 10/6/26, 11:11 PM
Saint Croix said...: Cary Grant's Thank You Letter to Eva Marie Saint; 10/7/26, 2:21 AM
Saint Croix said...: Eva Marie Saint met her future husband, television director Jeffrey Hayden, on a New York City subway in 1949.

He noticed her from behind because of her blonde hair, purple corduroy coat, and a large modeling portfolio with her name written in gold lettering. Liking the way she walked, he approached her, and they began talking--later joking that it was love at first sight before he even saw her face. They married in October 1951 and remained together for 65 years until his death in 2016.; 10/7/26, 2:28 AM
Saint Croix said...: She did a commercial for PBR! The best American beer.

Her grandson interviews her for the Santa Barbara Independent. This is really interesting.

To this day, I admire models. When I watch them go down the runway, and they’re absolutely vacant – I don’t know how they do that. So I was not successful in the [modeling work] I did, because I didn’t look blank. I always added something, or was having a good time. It took away from the clothes.; 10/7/26, 2:39 AM
Saint Croix said...: Good article on her in The Guardian.

And here is where Eva Marie Saint had something distinctive to offer that leading lady template: the chaotic scene at the art auction where heartbroken Thornhill confronts Eve who is now sitting with her sinister sugar-daddy boyfriend and anti-American spymaster Vandamm, played by James Mason. Vandamm places his hand on the back of her neck, creepily disarranging, just slightly, her blondeness – an unpleasant and unexpectedly real image of what we would now call coercive control. Then we get a closeup of Eve’s eyes brimming with tears of wretchedness and fear. It is a great moment which Saint delivered with style.

Imagine having to kiss Otto Preminger, on set! "This is how you kiss, Mr. Paul Newman. Like this. No tongue. Maybe a little tongue. I will show you again."; 10/7/26, 2:45 AM
Saint Croix said...: Back to the grandson interview.

Peggy was very successful. As we both became more successful, we moved into a basement apartment in Central Park East. It almost ended our relationship, because the phone was always ringing for Peggy for a radio job. Later on, when I started thinking about men, and thinking that I wanted someone to share this great new life I was living with, I realized that it would not be good to be married to an actor. There’d have to be jealousy. I was jealous of my friend Peggy. I really was. So I learned that an actor-actor marriage relationship would not be a good thing. And that stuck with me. And I never, ever dated actors.

She married a director. She was far more successful than he was. And she was happily married for over 60 years.

Smart.; 10/7/26, 2:53 AM
Saint Croix said...: a life in pictures.; 10/7/26, 2:55 AM
Saint Croix said...: We did an episode of Person to Person, a big network show with the great Edward R. Murrow. He would interview two celebrities per show – Don Hewitt was the producer at CBS. So they came to the apartment and they set up all the gear and we were just about ready to go live on the air, but right before, I whispered, “Oh my God, I have to go to the bathroom.” Don Hewitt, at master control, said, “Go ahead.” By then I had the microphone strapped on. So I went into the bathroom to do my thing, and went on air as soon as I got back. After the show, Don Hewitt said, “Oh, by the way, I plugged you in to all the stations on the network and everybody across the country heard you pee.”; 10/7/26, 3:00 AM
Saint Croix said...: Interview, part 2

Moving on to your role in North by Northwest. How did you score that part?

I had a wonderful agent at the time, Kurt Frings, who was the agent to Elizabeth Taylor and Audrey Hepburn. He was wonderful. He was Old Hollywood. He told me that Hitchcock wanted to have lunch with me, so I called my mother (who had never read a movie magazine; I don’t know where she got this) and she told me that he liked women in beige and white gloves.

I wore the outfit, and had a wonderful luncheon with him and his wife, Alma. He was charming and lovely, and by the time I got home the agent had called me and told me I had the part. When we finished the movie he made me promise him one thing: He made me promise that I wouldn’t do any more “sink-to-sink” movies. In reference to Waterfront where I look a little drab, he said, “Women want to get out of the house and see a movie with a heroine that looks the way they’d like to look. They don’t have the clothes, the hairdo, the jewelry; they fantasize and have a wonderful time.” I told him I couldn’t promise anything, because I take parts that I like, not by how I’ll look.

Hitchcock was a high-class guy. He always had a suit on. Can you believe the whole crew wore suits? I’ve never seen it before or after. During shooting, I was drinking coffee out of a Styrofoam cup and he said, “What are you doing?! Drinking coffee out of a Styrofoam cup in that beautiful dress? Somebody get Ms. Saint a china teacup!” But he was right, because I was stepping out of character.

He wasn’t from the studio, and didn’t give much direction except to say, “Don’t use your hands, lower your voice, and look at Cary at all times.” Those were the three things he gave me to do. But because of that I was able to conjure up the type of women he thought she was. I’d never known a spy lady, but who doesn’t want to be a spy lady? The things that he gave me worked to make the character. He cared about what his leading ladies wore and what their hair looked like. He didn’t like the clothes MGM had given me for the movie, so he took me shopping at Bergdorf Goodman. I called him my sugar daddy after that.; 10/7/26, 3:12 AM
Saint Croix said...: So when I did things like Exodus, which was three months in Europe, I would bring the whole family. When I was talking to Otto Preminger about whether I would do it, I said, “I have a two-year-old and five-year-old, and I can’t leave them at home. I would like my husband to come, so he can help me with them, and I would like my mother and father to come and help as well, and I would like my mother-in-law to come and be there when my folks get tired.”

He said, “Well, I guess you have your own Exodus, don’t you?” But he agreed to all of it.; 10/7/26, 3:17 AM
Saint Croix said...: North by Northwest is one of my favorite movies.

Thank you, and RIP, Ms. Saint.; 10/7/26, 3:25 AM
rcommal said...: She had a great run, and I'm so glad she made it to a ripe old age. RIP, Eva Marie.; 10/7/26, 6:22 AM
William said...: She managed to have a successful life in every dimension. It gives the rest of us heart to hear of such things. It can be done.......I suppose it's easier to pull off if you're rich, famous, and beautiful, but there's lots of evidence to the contrary. She lost some of her sexual magnetism by her early nineties, but she was always a welcome presence when she came on screen.......Who is the quintessential Hitchcock blonde: Grace Kelly or Eva Marie Saint? Grace Kelly had the fairy tale wedding, but Eva Marie had the fairy tale life.......I think North by Northwest is so enjoyable not despite its improbabilities but rather because of them. Trained killers don't use crop dusters. What sells the movie are the personas of Cary Grant and Eva Mairie Saint. In a world that is inhabited by such people, anything is possible.; 10/7/26, 7:27 AM
Kai Akker said...: Well said, William! Eva's startled reaction when the matchbook hits the floor near her at the climax of NXNW was so simple and so great. How many takes? Dunno. Much more could be said, but the picture says it best.

Yet it is hard to diminish Cary and Grace zipping through glorious Riviera Technicolor in To Catch a Thief. Why choose? Or Jimmy and Doris in The Man Who Knew Too Much. The 1950s had great, great movies; probably taken for granted at the time.; 10/7/26, 10:09 AM
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