female icons
Her debut in ‘The Law of Silence’ earned her an Oscar in the category of Best Supporting Actress
Her image has always been that of a cold and calculating blonde. It was the one given to him by Alfred Hitchcock in ‘With Death at His Heels’. Of course Eva Marie Saint has never been like that, but Hitchcock pigeonholed her forever.
Born in the town of Newark (United States) on July 4, 1924, Eva Marie Saint soon felt attracted to the world of the stage, reaping great reviews for her theatrical performances, and appearing at the beginning of the 50s in television broadcasts. She studied acting at Bowling Green State University, and soon began working on radio shows and appearing in many episodes of different television series. However, her talent did not become strongly noticed until she played a role on the stage in 1953. She was in Horton Foote’s ‘A Trip to Bointiful’ and Eva received the Critics’ Choice Award.
It was there that Elia Kazan, director of the Actor’s Studio, discovers her and calls her to star in ‘The Law of Silence’. Eva Marie attracted her attention by her incredible tenderness, her silent sadness and her sweet and innocent heart. Not even the brutish longshoreman from New York could bear such claims, and after surrendering at her feet he found the strength to face her ghosts and regain her dignity. Her debut gave her an Oscar in the category of best supporting actress.
This excellent start in Hollywood was not confirmed later in a prolific career, since Eva appeared during the 50s and 60s in little more than a dozen titles, among them ‘A hat full of rain’ (1957) by Fred Zinnemann, for the which won the award for best actress at the Venice Film Festival, ‘The Tree of Life’ (1957) by Edward Dmytryk, ‘Death at Your Heels’ (1959) by Alfred Hitchcock (with which she joined the list of the blondes from the Magician of Suspense, despite the fact that it was the only film he shot under his orders, despite the fact that his participation in ‘Marnie, the thief’ and ‘Torn Curtain’ was considered), ‘Exodus’ (1960) by Otto Preminger, ‘His Own Hell’ (1962) by John Frankenheimer, ‘Castles in the Sand’ (1965) by Vincente Minnelli, ‘Grand Prix’ (1966), a film set in the Formula 1 races in which it was also directed by Frankenheimer, or ‘The Russians are coming, The Russians are coming!’ (1966), a Cold War comedy directed by Norman Jewison.
In 1952 she married the director specializing in television series Jeffrey Hayden, with whom she has two children and three grandchildren, who directed episodes of such popular titles on the small screen as ‘Batman’, ‘Mannix’, ‘The Incredible Hulk’, ‘Magnum’, ‘Fantastic Car’ or ‘Falcon Crest’ with which she was linked until his death in 2016. Eva Marie, given the poor box office fortune of her films in the second half of the 1960s and early the 70s, he dedicated himself mainly to work for the television world and the theater. Among the most remembered television works are the western ‘The Macahans’ (1976), the thriller ‘Fatal Vision’ (1984), or the dramas ‘Through the Darkness’ (1984), ‘People Like Us’ (1990) -for which Saint won the Emmy Award–, and ‘My Antonia’ (1995).
In the new millennium, the veteran actress still continued to work and has appeared in films with a certain cachet, such as ‘I Dreamed of Africa’ (2000), ‘Knocking at Heaven’s Gate’ (2005) and ‘Superman Returns’ (2006), his latest screen work. In 2000 he visited the San Sebastian Festival, where he acknowledged: «Hitchcock told me three things: First, to lower my voice, second, not to use my hands and third, and most important, to always look Cary Grant in the eye. . The latter was easy. Today, at 97, she lives in Santa Monica. “I am older than the Hollywood Academy”, she has said on occasion.