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Denver Post (12/Oct/1990) - Eva Marie Saint at ease with superstars, super films

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Eva Marie Saint at ease with superstars, super films

Eva Marie Saint hasn't made a lot of movies, but two of them — Elia Kazan's "On the Waterfront" and Alfred Hitchcock's "North by Northwest" — were enough to create an indelible image.

Saint is elegant, cool and intelligent on screen, and she's no different in an interview.

She appears at the Denver International Film Festival at 6:45 tonight with "Primary Colors," a documentary about the artist and nun Corita Kent, which she narrates under the direction of her husband, Jeffrey Hayden. That will be followed at 9 p.m. by a showing of "On the Waterfront." Both events are at the Mann Cherry Creek theaters.

In mid-September, Saint visited the Breckenridge Festival of Film and talked about "On the Waterfront." It was her first film, and she not only worked with director Kazan and actors Marlon Brando and Karl Malden, she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.

Saint maintains a charming innocence, but it never covers up her brains.

"Many people talk about "North by Northwest," and they know so many things and they see so much in the film and I learn from them. But I don't know about the wallpaper on the wall and what it meant, or the white flowers and that sort of thing. Tell me about 'On the Waterfront.' "

Then she talked about Kazan and Brando.

"I was from the Actor's Studio. Kazan was my first director and probably he spoiled me for life in many areas. But I learned a lot from him that I still have with me. I found myself being very social on the set, for instance, until he explained to me how I should think of myself as an hourglass when I got up in the morning, and we all have just a certain amount of energy and that's what you have to save.

"So when you're on that screen, you have your energy and haven't dissipated it. To this day, I'm not reclusive on the set, but I do save my energy. I don't have interviews during the lunch time; I don't play cards; I don't call home; I don't take a book. I sit and think about what I'm doing.

"I was terrified the first day. I heard that everybody in town had auditioned for her (Edie Doyle), and I didn't want to make movies. I was very happy living in New York and making television shows and doing theater. The first scene was with Marlon up on the rooftop where the pigeons were, and I give him my brother's coat.

"Kazan said, 'Eva Marie, just make believe you're in a forest and there are animals, and they can come from behind the pigeon coops and the chimneys, and just think that any minute something can happen to you. You're a Catholic girl. You don't know much about men. You haven't been with them, and it's night.' And I kept thinking — I didn't say this — 'You don't have to tell me to be scared. I'm so terrified.' "

Over the years, Brando has acquired a reputation for being difficult. Saint was surprised anyone would think that.

"Marlon was wonderful to work with. He was a prince. He was one of the sweetest leading men I've ever had. It was my first film, and he was so giving. I mean literally — psychologically, too — but he literally kept giving me his coat because it was so cold on 'On the Waterfront.' I was so happy that I was happily married at the time because he was so adorable.

"And I had a true test with Marlon because I was with him all the time. It wasn't like working with an actor who's wonderful in the scene and then he goes. I saw him between the scenes and he was frightening in the sense that he was so vulnerable.

"The way Kazan works, we were thrown together a lot because you never finish a scene and go to your dressing room. You're always working on the next scene. You know when I drop the glove? Well, that happened (by accident) in the rehearsal. So when we showed Kazan, he said, 'That's it.' I don't believe that true art just happens. The fact that we could repeat it, that's, for me, the art in it."

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