July 4, 2024: Eva Marie Saint's 100th Birthday and TCM Shows North by Northwest Tonight

Skip the fireworks...stay home and watch North by Northwest instead. In the US on Turner Classic Movies.

There is a special reason, though:

Today: July 4th, 2024, is the 100th birthday of the female star of North by Northwest, Eva Marie Saint. I do believe that the rest of the cast is gone. We lost both Cary Grant and James Mason back in the EIGHTIES. (Mason in 1984; Grant in 1986.)

Eva Marie Saint is the oldest living Oscar winner(for On the Waterfront; 1954) and also the earliest-in-time surviving Oscar star.

I'm reminded that it was very close to 65 years ago TODAY -- on July 1, 1959 -- that Eva Marie Saint was the sole star of the movie to accompany Alfred Hitchcock to the premiere of North by Northwest in Chicago. The movie, of course, spends time on location in Chicago; I've not seen photos or film or any OTHER NXNW premiere that year. Eva Marie went to that premiere just a few days before her 35th birthday...Eve Kendall(in the movie) says she is 26 years old. (ALL pretty unmarried female characters in movies those days topped out at 26.)

An interview with TCM's Robert Osborne, from when he was alive and Saint was in her girlish 90s, will also be shown tonight too. Its always amusing to see the attractive but elder woman say "do you want to talk about when I played the sexy spy lady?"

Eva Marie Saint...a true Yankee Doodle Dandy ..born on the Fourth of July!