French postcard by Editions P.I., offered by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane', no. 877. Photo: Paramount Pictures.
French poster postcard by Editions F. Nugeron, no. E 35. Poster: Snark / Columbia Films S.A.B. Belgian poster for On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954) with Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint. The Wallonian title was Sur les quais, and the Flemish title was Op de kaaien.
American poster postcard by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Poster: MGM, 1966. American re-release poster for Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959). Caption: Only Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock ever gave you so much suspense in so many directions. So we brought it back!
Femme fatale Eve Kendall
Eva Marie Saint was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1924. Her parents were Quakers: Eva Marie née Rice and John Merle Saint. She had one older sister, Adelaide Louise Saint. Eva Marie attended Bethlehem Central High School in Delmar, New York, near Albany, graduating in 1942. According to her yearbook, Eva Marie's nickname was 'Bubbles', and her ambition was to be a teacher. She was also a cheerleader and senior class secretary. Saint studied acting at Bowling Green State University.
She started on television as an NBC page and appeared in the very early live NBC TV show Campus Hoopla in 1946–1947. Her acting career began with the TV movie A Christmas Carol (James Caddigan, 1947), starring John Carradine as the miser Ebenezer Scrooge. 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 television, 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 Lillian Gish and Jo Van Fleet. She appeared on both television and stage. 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. She co-starred with Paul Newman and Frank Sinatra. A TV critic dubbed her 'the Helen Hayes of television.'
Saint made her cinema debut at 30. She co-starred in On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954), opposite Marlon Brando. She played Edie Doyle, whose brother's death sets the film's drama in motion. Although Edie Doyle is essentially a lead, producer Sam Spiegel listed her as a Supporting Actress in hopes of getting her an Academy Award nomination. The ploy worked, and she won the Oscar. Her performance also earned her a BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) nomination for 'Most Promising Newcomer.' In his review for The New York Times, film critic A. H. Weiler 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." The film was a major success and launched Saint's movie career. She received $7,500 for the role.
For over the next decade, Eva Marie Saint was in high demand. She next appeared alongside Bob Hope in That Certain Feeling (Melvin Frank, Norman Panama, 1956) for which she received $50,000. She was then offered $100,000 to star in the lavish Civil War epic Raintree County (Edward Dmytryk, 1957) with Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift. After that, she starred with Don Murray in A Hatful of Rain (Fred Zinnemann, 1957), the pioneering drug-addiction drama. Although it was released earlier in 1957 than Raintree Country, it was made later. She received a BAFTA nomination for 'Best Foreign Actress' for her performance.
Her most famous director was Alfred Hitchcock. Hitch surprised many by choosing Saint over dozens of other candidates for the femme fatale Eve Kendall in his classic Spy thriller North by Northwest (1959) with Cary Grant and James Mason. Pedro Borges at IMDb: "Written by Ernest Lehman, the film updated and expanded upon the director's early 'wrong man' spy adventures of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, including The 39 Steps (1935), Young and Innocent (1937), and Saboteur (1942)." North by Northwest became a box-office hit. In his review in The New York Times, critic Abe H. Weiler 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 as both the sweet heroine and a glamorous charmer." Although North by Northwest might have propelled her to the top ranks of stardom, Eva Marie Saint chose to limit her film work to spend time with her husband, director Jeffrey Hayden, and their two children.
Italian postcard by B.F.F. Edit., no. 3813. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Collection: Marlene Pilaete.
British poster postcard by Pyramid, Leicester, no. PC 2126. Poster: MGM. Poster of Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959). Caption: The Master of Suspense weaves his greatest tale!
The mother of Tom Hanks
In the 1960s, Eva Marie Saint continued to act in both high-profile and offbeat pictures. She co-starred with Paul Newman in Exodus (Otto Preminger, 1960), a 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 a tragic beauty in the drama All Fall Down (John Frankendheimer, 1962), based upon a novel by James Leo Herlihy and a screenplay by William Inge. She appeared with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in the melodrama The Sandpiper (Vincente Minnelli, 1965) and with James Garner in the World War II thriller 36 Hours (George Seaton, 1965).
Saint joined an all-star cast in the comedic satire The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (Norman Jewison, 1966), and the international racing drama Grand Prix (John Frankenheimer, 1966), presented in Cinerama. Saint received some of her best reviews for co-starring as the wife of George Segal in Loving (Irvin Kershner, 1970), about a commercial artist's relationship with his wife and other women. It was critically acclaimed but did not do well at the box office.
Because mostly second-rate film roles came her way in the 1970s, Eva Marie Saint returned to television and the stage in the 1980s. She appeared in several made-for-television films. She played the mother of Cybill Shepherd on the television series Moonlighting (1986-1988), which lasted three years. She received Emmy nominations for the TV series How the West Was Won (Vincent McEveety, Bernard McEveety, 1976-1977), and for the TV movie Taxi!!! (Joseph Hardy, 1978). Saint was reunited with On the Waterfront co-star Karl Malden in the TV Mini-Series Fatal Vision (David Greene, 1984), this time as the wife of his character, as he investigated the murder of their daughter and granddaughters.
Saint returned to the big screen for the first time in over a decade in Nothing in Common (Garry Marshall, 1986), in which she played the mother of Tom Hanks's character. Critics applauded her return to features, but Saint soon returned to the small screen. After receiving five nominations, she won her first Emmy Award for the TV movie People Like Us (William Hale, 1990). She appeared in several television productions in the 1990s and was cast as the mother of radio producer Roz Doyle (Peri Gilpin) in a 1999 episode of the comedy series Frasier. Saint returned to feature films in I Dreamed of Africa (Hugh Hudson, 2000) with Kim Basinger. In 2005, she co-starred with Jessica Lange and Sam Shepard in Don't Come Knocking (Wim Wenders, 2005), and appeared in the family film Because of Winn-Dixie (Wayne Wang, 2005). Saint appeared as Martha Kent, the adoptive mother of Superman, in Superman Returns (Bryan Singer, 2006) alongside Brandon Routh.
In 2009, she made a rare public appearance at the 81st Academy Awards ceremony as a Best Supporting Actress presenter. Saint 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. She played the adult version of Willa in the film adaptation of the novel Winter's Tale (Mark Helprin, 2014). Saint appeared at the 2018 Academy Awards and played in the drama Mariette in Ecstasy (John Bailey, 2019), set in a turn-of-the-century religious community about a nun who has recently taken her vows. It was her last film. She had two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for motion pictures at 6624 Hollywood Boulevard, and one for television at 6730 Hollywood Boulevard. Eva Marie Saint married producer and director Jeffrey Hayden in 1951. They had met on a subway in New York. The couple remained together till Hayden's death in 2016. Saint died on 6 October 2026 at her home in Los Angeles. They had two children, a son, Darrell Hayden (1955), and a daughter, actress Laurette Hayden (1958), and had four grandchildren.
French poster postcard by Editions F. Nugeron, no. E 421. French poster for Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959). The French title was La mort aux trousses.
French poster postcard by Éditions Zreik, Paris, in the Collection Télérama, la mémoire du cinéma, no. 17. Poster: Document 'The Last Movies'. French poster for Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959). The French title was La mort aux trousses.
Dutch poster postcard by Film Freak Productions, no. FF924. Poster: Radio Days, 1985. Poster for Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959). Caption: Only Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock ever gave you so much suspense in so many directions. So we brought it back!
Sources: Pedro Borges (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch and English) and IMDb.
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