Remembering Eva Marie Saint / 'Interview with the Vampire' turns 50

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Dave Davies (0:14)

This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies. The actress Eva Marie Saint, best known for two very different roles in On the Waterfront and North by Northwest, died last week. She was 102 years old.

She won an Academy Award in 1955 for her movie debut in On the Waterfront, playing the shy parochial school educated young woman opposite longshoreman Marlon Brando. Here they are on a first date. What do you really care, am I right?

Eva Marie Saint (0:45)

Shouldn't everybody care about everybody else?

SPEAKER_4 (0:50)

Oh, what a fruitcake you are.

Eva Marie Saint (0:53)

I mean, isn't everybody a part of everybody else?

Dave Davies (0:57)

And you really believe that, Drew?

Eva Marie Saint (0:59)

Yes, I do.

Dave Davies (1:01)

She co-starred with Cary Grant in the Hitchcock thriller North by Northwest, playing a femme fatale.

SPEAKER_4 (1:07)

I'm a big girl.

Dave Davies (1:10)

Yeah, and in all the right places, too.

Eva Marie Saint studied at the Actors Studio. Early in her career, she chose to focus on raising her two children with her husband, TV director Jeffrey Hayden. They were married 65 years until his death in 2016

She appeared in the film dramas A Hatful of Rain, Rain Tree opposite Montgomery Clift, Exodus alongside Paul Newman, and All Fall Down with Warren Beatty. In the film Loving, she played the wife of George Segal who is about to run away with another woman. Saint's character wants him to buy a house, but he tells her he considers it a 30-year trap. Here they are in a car in the rain, talking.

Eva Marie Saint (1:51)

And I'm a trap and the kids are trapped, is that what you meant?

SPEAKER_4 (1:54)

All right, let's cut it off right now.

Eva Marie Saint (1:56)

Brooks, I don't want to be thought of as a trap. Can you understand that? I mean, if you're so damn unhappy, why don't you just pack up and leave? I'm not stopping you.

Justin Chang (2:03)

Then who in the hell do you think you are anyway?

Dave Davies (2:06)

Film critic Pauline Kale wrote that in that film, Saint gave, quote, a stunning performance in what might have been a cliche role.

Eva Marie Saint took a comic turn in the 1966 Cold War farce The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming. Set in a small New England shore town, the all-star comedy cast included Carl Reiner as her husband and Alan Arkin as the Soviet lieutenant whose submarine has run aground. The town thinks it's been invaded and the US military is on the way. But then one of the Soviet crew saves the life of a local boy and the town decides to help the Soviets get away. Eva Marie Saint comes up with an idea.

Eva Marie Saint (2:47)

We could give them an escort. I mean, we could use all the little boats out in the harbor.

A convoy.

Dave Davies (2:58)

An escort?

SPEAKER_4 (3:00)

Could we do that, Link?

Eva Marie Saint (3:02)

Go out with them.

Terry Gross (3:03)

Take them out of the harbor.

Can we help them get away, Dick? Can we?

Eva Marie Saint (3:11)

Anybody wants to go with them, I ain't going to stop them. What?

Dave Davies (3:16)

In the late 1980s, Saint played Sybil Shepherd's mother in the comedy drama series Moonlighting, and she won an Emmy for her performance on the 1990 TV miniseries People Like Us.

Terry Gross spoke to Eva Marie Saint in 2000 Terry asked her how she got the part in her first film, On the Waterfront.

Eva Marie Saint (3:35)

At one point, I did Trip to Bountiful. The Horton Foote play, first it was a television, then he rewrote it as a play, with Lillian Gish.

Kazan saw me in that part. Martin Giro, my agent, sent Kazan to see me in that and he saw it, and thought of me as the young, virginal blonde in On the Waterfront. I didn't read for it. I improvised with Marlon Brando, and it was an interesting improvisation because to this day, I don't know what he told Marlon, but he did tell me that I was at home, and a young man was coming to visit my sister who was not at home, so my job was to keep him out of that house. Don't let him in the door.

Well, I don't know what happened, but he went in the door. He came in the living room. We were dancing. We were laughing. I was crying. He was taking my skirt and whipping it around, and the sparks flew, and Kazan saw that, and suddenly I was on the waterfront.