Saint Eva

Art by Robert Williams

Long ago, well before home computers, I lucked into a wonderful phone interview with Eva Marie Saint, who passed away recently at the remarkable age of 102. A search through my paper files has not (darn it!) turned up a copy of my published article. It appeared, I think, in the Hollywood Reporter, tied to Valentine’s Day.  But I’ve always remembered the words I chose to start the article: “Imagine kissing Cary Grant. Or being locked in a passionate embrace with Paul Newman.”  My focus was on how an actress manages to stay professional during a convincingly hot love scene. What was it like, I asked Saint, to play a mysterious Hitchcock blonde smooching Grant on a moving train in North By Northwest? With characteristic matter-of-factness she answered: her biggest concern in kissing Cary Grant was that she might accidentally step on his feet.

 Eva Marie Saint (what a wonderful name!) captivated Hollywood because she projected a unique combination of fire and ice. A natural blonde from a Quaker family, she seemed cool and reserved, but excelled at roles in which she was bowled over by passion. Her film debut, after some successful Broadway appearances, was opposite Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront. The role of Edie, whose beloved brother has been killed by corrupt union bosses, won her an Oscar for best supporting actress, and gave her lifelong respect for Brando’s unique film presence. The statuette was handed to her two days before the birth of her first child, and she quipped on stage, “"I may have the baby right here!”

 Practically unique for a Hollywood star, Saint was married for sixty-five years to her first great love. TV director Jeffrey Hayden. Her career might have been even bigger if she hadn’t insisted on putting family first. I never met her son, but daughter Laurette was a Roger Corman employee in the 1980s, between my own two Corman tenures. In researching my Roger Corman: Blood-Sucking Vampires, Flesh-Eating Cockroaches, and Driller Killers, I had a long, instructive chat with Laurette about life as a Corman assistant. Though she lacked her mother’s platinum hair, Laurette had some of Eva Marie Saint’s basic dignity. Which was why it was hard for me to imagine one facet of her job: helping with office “breast checks,” in which some leading ladies were asked to bare themselves above the waist to prove that their bosoms were suitably photogenic. For a while Laurette didn’t question the propriety of what she was being required to do.  Gradually, however, after working on Corman flicks like Slumber Party Massacre (1982), she came to feel that the New World Pictures attitude toward women and sex was tougher to justify, and that it was “harder to keep a sense of humor.” That’s why she moved on, first assuming executive posts at Lifetime Television and the USA Network, before quitting showbiz to evolve into a marriage and family therapist. Given that her father died at age 90 and her mother lived past the century mark, I send her condolences on her mother’s death and wish her long years of success in her chosen profession.

 Eva Marie Saint’s great era encompassed the years 1954 through 1960, when she was cast opposite Paul Newman as a romantic lead in Exodus. Thereafter she played smallish parts in big films like Grand Prix (1966) as well as bigger parts in smaller ones (The Stalking Moon, 1968), before taking a long break and then appearing mostly on television. (She played Cybill Shepherd’s mother for six episodes of Moonlighting.)  I’m certain she remained classy through all of it.