“All the boys think she’s a spy…”
The stars are going out.
Farewell then the epitome of style, class and poise, Eva Marie Saint. I’ve been dreading this news ever since our mutual LA friend, hair and make-up artist Jeffrey, came to stay three years ago, worried that the then 99 year-old widow had gone unnervingly quiet on him.
Yes, I know, 102 is a remarkable age whichever way you look at it, and in the history book of longest-lived Hollywood A-listers it seems only Olivia de Havilland surpassed the record at a whopping 104. Indeed, after Olivia’s death in 2020, Saint held the title of the oldest living Oscar-winning actor on the planet.
The polygon piccie (IG link here) is my impromptu snapshot of Eva’s movie star on the Walk Of Fame, at 6624 Hollywood Boulevard. As luck would have it, my telly scriptwriter pal Ken and I passed it purely by chance on the way to a fancy dress shop to get kitted out for the WeHo Hallowe’en parade of October 2016. There is a second star dedicated to la Saint’s TV output, not far away at 6730, though admittedly, I wasn’t aware she was awarded the rare distinction of a double gong in 1980 until preparing this piece.
Cast opposite Cary Grant in forever my all-time favourite flick, the insanely rewatchable spy drama North By Northwest was enough for me to be eternally fascinated by the New Jerseyan’s inscrutable pale-faced mystique. In what is ostensibly Hitchcock’s brilliant technicolour retooling of his earlier The 39 Steps, her soignée turn as femme fatale Eve Kendall, an Arctically cool secret agent and arguably the most self-possessed and enigmatically demure of the Hitchcock blondes, was a masterstroke. And she played it to icy perfection. The Bond films started here, folks.
In an interview with Vanity Fair in 2014, Eva recalled how Hitch took her shopping to pick out her clothes for the picture. The location? Fifth Avenue’s flagship Bergdorf Goodman store, virtually next door to the plush Plaza Hotel which featured heavily in the movie’s first act and that catastrophic case of mistaken identity.
“He didn’t talk about acting. He worked with me from the outside in. My hair, my makeup, my shoes, my jewellery, my purse, my gloves, everything. Just from creating that exterior for me, he gave me the sense of a spy lady. But we never talked about emotion. He told me not to use my hands, I have a habit of doing that, and to lower my voice. And always, in my scenes with Cary Grant, look directly into his eyes, which was not difficult.“
It’s all the more fascinating that she could have been a contender up there with the most-papped glamour pusses of the era Audrey, Elizabeth and Marilyn and all the travails that come pre-packaged with such colour supplement status, yet as her star was in the ascendent this principled lady made the decision to step back from the spotlight to raise a family, limiting herself to no more than one solitary film a year. Just like that. You can leave your rampant narcissism and ambitious oversized egos at the door, fellas, this fellow Cancerian clearly couldn’t give a flying crop duster.
Talking of contenders, it’ll be no surprise that I’m also hugely fond of EMS’s role as Edie Doyle in Elia Kazan’s gritty monochrome marvel On The Waterfront, opposite working class hero Marlon Brando, who was two months her senior. Who else can say they won the Academy Award for their first film role? And who played supporting actress to both of my all-time favourite leading men? Well, Eva did. With her trademark glacial grace and sublime subtlety, that she also co-starred with those blue-eyed boys Paul Newman and Frank Sinatra just makes her unimpeachably fabulous in my book.
And when the 80-something effectively put retirement on hold to play Clark Kent’s adoptive mother, Martha in 2006’s Superman Returns, well, for me, the gravitas of her extended cameo was the main reason for watching; a super-eminent pièce de résistance from another age, more Golden than Krypton, in another of the film world’s so-so reboots.
The night train has disappeared into the tunnel’s crotch-hungry dark for the last time.
My condolences to Darrell and Laurette and the rest of the family. Requiescat in pace.
Steve Pafford
