ON THE WATERFRONT (1954) Elia Kazan
Happy belated birthday, USA! Happy belated birthday, Caesar Salad!! And happy belated birthday, Eva Marie Saint!!!
This past Fourth of July, the Edie to Brando's Terry Malloy celebrated her one-hundredth turn 'round the sun. As a centenary, Saint is the oldest living and earliest surviving Academy Award winner, keeping our connection to Old Hollywood alive at a time when even the 1970s renegades seem to be leaving us. Reflecting on her long career, one can trace the parallel, often juxtaposed, evolution of the American film industry. And yet, Eva Marie Saint rose to stardom on a wave of innovation, revolutionary acting styles and approaches, her presence like a promise of new things to come…
Her haggard loveliness seems to have sprung from between the actual cobblestones of the docks.
So wrote Jack Moffitt for The Hollywood Report and so quoted Nathaniel Rogers on the 1954 Supporting Actress Smackdown. It's an apt description of what audiences might have seen when they first met Eva Marie Saint on the silver screen, playing a young woman whose brother was just killed in Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront. There is a charm to her that feels at home within the picture's grounded realism. Well, maybe not at home, but not lost either. Ponder her image, and you'll grasp an almost religious beauty that echoes notions of glamor without ever summoning it in its incongruous glory.
Instead, the camera finds a suggestion of what could be in Saint's pearl-perfect visage and platinum-spun hair. She is a treasure waiting to be found, a ripe fruit already bruised by a too-firm touch, the half-finished mural of the Madonna whose painted colors have already started to crack and fade. But she is no idea prone to vanish inside such florid metaphors. For Saint makes her Edie into a full-fledged person who can go toe to toe with one of the defining works of film acting without looking out of her element. Her grief is heartfelt rather than an abstraction, tearing through the film in a delicate physicality that can sometimes burst with outrage.
As a matter of fact, the actress' body language is more important than her beauty and its many evocations. Mute any moment shared with Brando, and you'll see a rhapsody of meaning in the balance between two performers sharing the camera's gaze. Loss manifests in decisive movements, a body with a purpose, fueled by rage at the world's injustices and all she's been forced to suffer. Give her enough leeway and Saint will add tentativeness to her repertoire, organic reactions to the leading man's improvised business that tell these people's stories on their own. The legendary glove scene deserves its reputation, alright.
But, of course, Saint does disrupt some of On the Waterfront's gloom and doom. In her projected innocence, Kazan finds a powerful note to break through the narrative melody. Sometimes literally, as her vocal work sounds so removed from the grittiness of her peers, she seems to float above them. The actress further suggests fragility through her trill. And in all this, so transparent and guileless, so open and luminous, Saint's Edie is hope personified and struggling to survive. If the story's erstwhile contender could have a future, Saint's points the way forward. Her impact is immeasurable, providing the film with a necessary variation.
It's impossible to argue against those who place On the Waterfront above everything else in Eva Marie Saint's career but to say she was a revelation that came out of nowhere in 1954 would be erroneous, too. When she made her big screen debut, the actress had built an impressive resume in the nascent television business, amassing over 25 credited roles. She started as an NBC page and began appearing in front of cameras as early as 1947. Then, expanding her horizons to radio and the stage, Saint found hard-won success. By 1953, she was on TV and Broadway, originating the role of Thelma in The Trip to Bountiful, for which she won some of her first acting awards.
Involvement with the Actors Studio led Eva Marie Saint to new acting styles while working alongside such stars as Lilian Gish gave her an insight into classical technique. She's a product of both worlds, and her early work reveals it. Moreover, her involvement in early television makes her a pioneer of considerable historical importance. Look at the Emmys' start as an awards organization, and you'll soon find Saint's name, a first-time nominee in 1955 who would return to the race various times across a 35-year span. Such was her impact that, apparently, a writer called her "the Helen Hayes of television." While I haven't been able to find the source for this, it seems plausible.
Even as her fame grew in Hollywood, Saint would continue to appear on stage and TV, building a career of contrasts in more ways than one. Her parochial loveliness and All-American good looks made her prone to typecasting as a sweet non-entity, some wasp-waisted angel whose character begins and ends in a vague idea of moral goodness. I want to say she always fought against the constraints imposed by such parts, but that would be a lie. As it happens, Eva Marie Saint often capitulated in the face of these challenges, making herself flat and unspecific, a prop more than an active participant in any given human drama. Maybe filmmakers thought her last name was all she could ever play.
A HATFUL OF RAIN (1957) Fred Zinnemann
It wasn't all bad, though. In A Hatful of Rain – one of those midcentury stage-to-screen transplants the studios loved so much – she finds humanity in her character's decency. At times, the pregnant wife to a traumatized war vet seems positioned for a melodramatic twist, yet Saint resists the temptation. Furthermore, she seems to fight against it when sharing scenes with the bombastic Anthony Franciosa, who serves a side of smoking ham with no proportion and even less shame. Like a hurricane, he storms into the movie and throws everything into tonal disarray, almost forcing the other actors into de-escalating parts, containing the chaos, settling it into order.
If you need proof of the Academy's oft-dubious taste, consider that Franciosa was his film's only Oscar nomination while Saint, who collected considerable precursor support, was left empty-handed. The results weren't better when she decided to take Alfred Hitchcock on an enticing proposition, playing up sexy spy shenanigans in North by Northwest. She's as precise as the master of suspense, elegantly slithering through the film with a hint of provocation. Erecting a smokescreen of innuendo and half-truths, she sometimes reveals real feeling, somehow forcing the twisty tale to function as a romance as much as it does as a thrilling adventure tinged with conspiracy.
NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959) Alfred Hitchcock
The pits of Eva Marie Saint's performances, as far as I've seen, are probably Raintree County and Exodus. In the Liz Taylor-starring Gone with the Wind-wannabe, she's boredom made flesh. The Zionist epic is much worse, however, while, at the same time, more interesting. There, Saint achieves such inexpression she becomes akin to a black hole, an inverted force intent on ruining her movie from the inside. If you've only ever seen Saint in one of these movies, please don't give up. She can be remarkable, and one doesn't need to leave the realm of long-suffering wives and goodie-two-shows to confirm it either. Sometimes, whether by choice or directorial command, she could even play with the tenets of those types to great effect.
In Minelli's The Sandpiper, all the flat rigidity she was capable of is turned to eleven, so tense you can practically hear crevices breaking within, opening into chasms of the soul. Her arch is an escalation, dutifully repressed until her husband's adultery inspires a mighty scream. The moment it happens, Saint has become the reflection of her film, letting out steam when the pressure is too much to bear in silence. As the New Hollywood rose on the horizon, she played a twist of the same idea, only much loser and ostensibly naturalistic from minute one. Yes, Kershner's Loving contains some of her best work, a performance of lived-in maturity that culminates in the terror of humiliation, the fury that comes after, and the defeat.
LOVING (1970) Irvin Kershner
Sadly, while Saint had everything to thrive in the New Hollywood of the 1970s, worthwhile roles were rare. So, she dedicated herself even more to TV and theater. And as ever, Eva Marie Saint thrived. Under the limelight and across the proscenium, she played some of Tennesse Williams's madwomen and Eugene O'Neil's despairing folk, works by George Bernard Shaw, Arthur Miller, and many other luminaries. On TV, she became synonymous with prestige TV, from the How the West Was Won miniseries to her Emmy-winning turn in People Like Us. One might assume Saint's career fizzled beyond the big screen, as her major roles became few and far between at this time. However, her excellence was felt elsewhere and appropriately appreciated, too.
In the twilight of the 20th century, Saint returned to cinema mostly through supporting roles, while her presence became constant throughout non-fiction work about Old Hollywood and the industry's history. The new millennium has seen her continued work and recognition, including some risks one might not expect from a woman who has become something of an institution. In 2005, she appeared in Wim Wenders' Don't Come Knocking, and the 2010s brought her to animated TV, playing an elderly Katara in Nickelodeon's The Legend of Korra. Saint has even acted in podcasts as recently as 2022, reviving the radio play format for a new era.
Awards obsessives might also recall some of her appearances at the Oscars as a previous victor and the legacy of Old Hollywood manifest. At the 81st Academy Awards, when the "circle of winners" format was introduced, Saint sang the praises of Viola Davis in Doubt. Years later, at the 90th Academy Awards, the 93-year-old star celebrated the art of costume design while reminiscing about her long career. I'll always remember her words about Edith Head and the rose dress from North by Northwest, her pride about having worked with Brando and Grant in their prime, and her overall regality. Though I haven't loved her in everything I've seen, I know I would have joined that year's Oscar attendees in giving Eva Marie Saint a standing ovation. Honestly, she's an inspiration.
What about you, dear reader? What are your favorite Eva Marie Saint movies and memories?