Eva Marie Saint, Oscar winner and Hitchcock star, dies at 102

Eva Marie Saint, who won an Oscar for her film debut opposite Marlon Brando in “On the Waterfront” and later played a secret agent in Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest,” has died at 102. Her career spanned eight decades.

Saint died of natural causes at her Los Angeles home, surrounded by family and loved ones, her publicist, Jeff Sanderson, told CBS News.

In Elia Kazan’s 1954 film “On the Waterfront,” Saint played Edie Doyle, whose brother is murdered by thugs working for a mob boss who controls a longshoremen’s union. Edie becomes involved with Brando’s dockworker, Terry Malloy. The performance earned Saint the Academy Award for best supporting actress, one of eight Oscars won by the film. She was visibly pregnant at the ceremony. “I may have the baby right here!” she said. Her son, Darrell, was born two days later, CBS News reported.

Five years later, Saint played Eve Kendall in “North by Northwest,” opposite Cary Grant. Kendall appears to be a mysterious stranger drawn into Grant’s flight from spies, but she is an agent herself. Saint recalled Hitchcock giving her three instructions for the role: “Lower your voice. Don’t use your hands. And look directly into Cary Grant’s eyes at all times.”

Born July 4, 1924, in Newark, New Jersey, Saint grew up in upstate New York. She entered Bowling Green State University in Ohio intending to become a teacher, then began acting in student productions. In New York, she trained at the Actors Studio and built a career in live television. She starred in the first television production of Horton Foote’s “The Trip to Bountiful” and repeated the role on Broadway, where Kazan noticed her.

At her audition for “On the Waterfront,” Brando turned on a radio and danced with her. “Kazan saw the chemistry, and he could see that it could work for the movie,” Saint told the Santa Barbara Independent in 2010.

Saint went on to appear in films including “Raintree County,” “Exodus,” “All Fall Down,” “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming,” “Grand Prix” and “Superman Returns,” in which she played Martha Kent. Her television work brought five Emmy nominations and a win for the 1990 movie “People Like Us.” She was still performing at 97, appearing in a podcast play, according to CBS News.

Saint said she limited her film work while raising her children with director-producer Jeffrey Hayden, whom she married in 1951. When an agent told her that making no more than one movie a year would keep her from becoming a superstar, she replied, “Well, I guess not.” Asked years later what happened to the agent, she said: “Fired him.”

Hayden died in 2016 after 65 years of marriage. Saint is survived by their two children, Darrell and Laurette, four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, according to Sanderson’s statement.