Eva Marie Saint, Oscar Winner for ‘On the Waterfront,' Dies at 102

Eva Marie Saint has died. She was 102.

The oldest living Oscar winner and one of the last real links to the Hollywood that Brando, Kazan and Hitchcock built, she won Best Supporting Actress for "On the Waterfront" in 1955.

What people forget is that ‘Waterfront’ was her first movie. I didn't know that until today. Kazan put her across from Brando, the most towering actor alive, who was delivering one of the most important performances in cinema history, and somehow she held the screen. Edie Doyle is gentle and stubborn, and she never plays it as a victim. Watch the glove scene again. Brando gets the credit, but she's the one making it work.

Then Hitchcock got her. "North by Northwest" (1959) is the other film most people know her from. Her Eve Kendall is cool, funny, and a lot smarter than Cary Grant's character. Hitchcock reportedly told her to lower her voice and stop playing sweet girls. Quite honestly, she took the note and gave him one of the best performances in any of Hitch's films.

She said in interviews that she turned down work to raise her kids, and that it was a choice she didn't regret. The rest of her filmography includes "Exodus," "All Fall Down," "The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming" and "Grand Prix." It's a solid run, but it's her work with Hitchcock and Kazan that will be her legacy.

She even turned up as Martha Kent in Bryan Singer's "Superman Returns" in 2006. Her last screen role was in "Winter's Tale" in 2014. She came out for the Oscars in 2018, at 93, and got one of the warmest ovations of the night.

There aren't many left from that era. Now there's one fewer. A Hollywood that feels like another world, and she was one of the last people who could tell you how it was.