Eva Marie Saint, the Oscar-winning actress who achieved cinematic immortality as the coolest of Hitchcock blondes in North By Northwest, has died aged 102.
Saint's most famous role came in Alfred Hitchcock's 1959 classic, where she played Eve Kendall, a mysterious woman who seduces Cary Grant's fugitive ad man Roger Thornhill aboard a train from New York to Chicago. Her famously succinct introduction - "I'm Eve Kendall. I'm 26 and unmarried. Now you know everything" - captured the creamy insinuation and enigmatic allure that defined her screen persona.
The Hitchcock Blonde Persona
Hitchcock found the combination of Saint's stylish assurance and hint of prim respectability irresistible. His instructions were for her to lower her voice, not use her hands, and look into Grant's eyes at all times. The result was an intensely realised persona, a hypnotic trance subject with great charisma, showcasing gowns, coats, long gloves, discreet necklaces, and a thick wavy curtain of blond hair.
A standout moment came in the art auction scene, where James Mason's sinister spymaster Vandamm places his hand on the back of her neck, slightly disarranging her blondness - an unpleasant image of coercive control. Saint delivered the closeup of Eve's eyes brimming with tears of wretchedness and fear with great style.
From TV Drama to Oscar Glory
Saint came up through live TV drama, winning an Emmy, and demonstrated her range in a musical version of Thornton Wilder's Our Town with Paul Newman and Frank Sinatra. She showed her comedic side in That Certain Feeling (1956) opposite Bob Hope, but the movies always wanted something more serious and glacial from her.
She won her Oscar for best supporting actress for Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954), playing Edie, the gentle schoolgirlish kid sister of a murdered dockworker, opposite Marlon Brando's tough ex-boxer Terry. Edie is tough in her own way, demanding answers about her brother's death, and part of what shames Terry into action.
Later Roles and Lasting Legacy
As her career progressed in the 60s and her style of femininity became unfashionable, Saint took roles of wives and helpmeets, playing them with dignity and restraint. She was Richard Burton's wife in The Sandpiper, the wronged wife in A Hatful of Rain (1957), and a nurse in both Exodus (1960) and 36 Hours (1965).
Saint worked with John Frankenheimer, who valued her distinct intensity and maturity, in Grand Prix (1966) and All Fall Down (1962). In Loving (1970), she played another wronged wife, this time married to a sleazy philanderer played by George Segal. Saint never became an A-list superstar, but in North By Northwest she achieved a timeless moment of movie mystique: the sensual, self-possessed Eve, as mysteriously sexual as that Freudian image of the train disappearing into the tunnel's darkness.
