Eva Marie Saint (1924-2026)

[TechnicolorAcid]

Eva Marie Saint

[thirtyframesasecond]

I just assumed EMS would outlive us all.

[JSC]

Still, 102 was a darn good run. RIP.

[Beloved Aunt]

It's amazing how incredibly selective her filmography was. Like 20 films over 70 years. I'm sure she turned down scores of roles. Probably the most carefully and selectively created image in film history, honestly. It's also funny to see her in behind-the-scenes photographs in her heyday--she always looks very confident, like the life of the party, funnily, considering her image on film.

[Beloved Aunt]

& I wonder why Hitchcock didn't do another film with her--she was a wonderful replacement for Grace Kelly, just as beautiful and a much better actress than Kelly, or Tippi Hedren, to boot.

[hearthesilence]

From The New York Times:

Stardom beckoned, but Ms. Saint decided to raise a family and to make only one movie a year while her two children were growing up. She later recalled turning down a three-picture deal that her agent promised would make her “a superstar.” What she preferred, she reflected in 1996 to the Hollywood interviewers David Fantle and ‎Tom Johnson, was “to be a working actress with a home life that worked.”

“I have a life, and it is not lived on the set,” she said. “I felt that way when I was raising my kids, and I feel that way now. I don’t want make-believe children. When Donna Reed, the perfect American mother to millions of TV viewers in the 1950s, ended her show, her children were teenagers. She said to me, ‘Now I’m going to get to know my kids.’ I thought that was so very sad.”

[Matt]

From this interview, it seems like she was prioritizing her family (two young children) at the time. And she was already very choosy with parts. I imagine winning an Oscar for her debut film gave her some freedom in choosing her roles, and she doesn't appear to have ever been a studio contract player faced into roles she didn't want to play.

It also seems, from that interview, that Hitchcock had a strong opinion of the type of roles she should be taking, and she disagreed with him. I don't think she wanted to be the next Grace Kelly, and he probably didn't like that.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

It also seems, from that interview, that Hitchcock had a strong opinion of the type of roles she should be taking, and she disagreed with him. I don't think she wanted to be the next Grace Kelly, and he probably didn't like that.

Hitchcock apparently complained to Hedda Hopper that he "took a lot of trouble" towards "making her sleek and sophisticated," only for her to go from North by Northwest to "a picture called Exodus and looking dissipated." I doubt he looked any more favorably on her role in All Fall Down.

[Criterion Nitrile]

Eva Marie Saint 1924 - 2026

The Robert Osborne TCMFF interview with Eva Marie Saint is one of my favorites. A few months before her 90th birthday, she seemed so sharp, and happy, and full of life. An inspiration to us all.

Eva Marie Saint Interviewed by Robert Osborne Live from the TCM Classic Film Festival (2014)

[j99]

I didn’t know too much about her, apart from On The Waterfront and North By Northwest, and she was excellent in both, but it’s refreshing to hear she didn’t chase the dollar, and also stood up to the bullying Hitchcock. Another memory I have of her is being immortalised in the song, Rattlesnakes, by Lloyd Cole and the Commotions in the 1980s. Such a long life, and I’m pleased to see her get an obituary on BBC news. Thoroughly deserved.

https://youtu.be/gSc46sEZdl4?si=mEzfj_Ib3bgHck9g

[The Curious Sofa]

Eve Marie Saint never "stood up" to a "bullying Hitchcock", nor did she ever make such claims. In fact, she has always spoken highly of working with him. A lot of interpretation is going on here, making it sound like she went against his advice in an act of rebellion. However, the truth is that cinema changed in the '60s and the type of old-school movie stardom that Hitchcock had envisaged for her went out of fashion. And like for many beautiful actresses, Saint's career began to cool when she hit her 40s.

One of her later films that I rather like is Irvin Kershner's Loving, a midlife crisis comedy-drama in which George Segal blows up his marriage to the long-suffering Saint, who does most of the heavy lifting in terms of acting.

[pistolwink]

She's quite wonderful in the original live-TV version of Chayefsky's "Middle of the Night." Saint, like a lot of actors of her generation, did some splendid work in live TV that may as well be lost since it's mostly locked away in the form of lonely 16mm prints in archives.

[crimlaw]

I think ‘Loving’ is a fine film that needs to be rediscovered. I remember it receiving critical acclaim with NYC critics when released by Columbia in 1970.

Good companion piece to Ang Lee’s ‘The Ice Storm’.

[domino harvey]

In considering her career, you also have to remember that she didn’t star in her first film until she was 30, so she missed the entire ingenue route. It also must be said that she did not pick many showy roles. Looking at her filmography, I see several movies I remember enjoying but which I completely forgot she was even in (A Hatful of Rain etc) and her first follow-up to winning the Oscar was a Bob Hope comedy (which I do remember her in, to no one’s fortune) so…