I just read that Eva Marie Saint is ninety years old. I’m not sure many people in the area remember that she grew up in nearby Delmar, graduated from Bethlehem Central High School in 1942, studied at Bowling Green State University, - and went on to a career of incredible quality. She won an Oscar for her performance with Marlon Brando in ‘On the Waterfront’, accompanied Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift in the Civil War epic ‘Raintree County’. Alfred Hitchcock selected her for a starring role in ‘North by Northwest’ with Cary Grant. Later she co-starred with Paul Newman in Otto Preminger’s ‘Exodus’, and appeared with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Vincente Minnelli’s ‘The Sandpiper’. Well . . . . . my father was the guidance counselor at BCHS in the ‘40’s and he’d always claimed, with a smile and a wink, that two students who took his advice were Walter McQuade, who became editor of the now-defunct magazine Architectural Forum, - and Eva Marie Saint. Sometime in the early eighties, while living in Manhattan, Diana and I learned that Ms. Saint was to appear at the Roundabout Theater in a production directed by her husband. My father made the trip from upstate to accompany us and, seated before the show, he quizzed an usher about the procedure if one wished to see Ms. Saint backstage after the show. The usher indicated that he could deliver a note to Ms. Saint and she would indicate if she wished to see us. He did, and she did, - and after the show we were ushered backstage to the dressing room shared by she and her director husband. My father had grown a bit portly in his old age, but Eva Marie Saint surprised him with a huge hug, and I think I saw (I know I saw) tears in Dad’s eyes. There was a lot of reminiscing about growing up in a small village near Albany, and when Diana remembered that both she and Eva had been cheerleaders in high school, - Ms. Saint suggested they manage a couple of the old cheers together, recalling also that one of her early gigs was as a cheerleader in a TV commercial for Ked’s sneakers. Only after we were back on the street did we realize we’d been in the company of one of Hollywood’s greats for over forty-five minutes talking about cheerleading, Ked’s sneakers, and Delmar in the ‘40’s.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Nov 2014 00:57:10 +0000