Photo: 20th Century Fox / Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
Sadly, this past week we all lost someone special, even saintly.
Eva Marie Saint undoubtedly is now appearing in her final debut on a much loftier, bigger screen, heaven.
Hollywood parishioners will long remember when she made one of the most spectacular film debuts in Hollywood history in On the Waterfront as the beloved costar with Marlon Brando.
Then Eva dazzled us again in North by Northwest starring alongside Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic romantic thriller. When she passed on Oct. 6, she was 102. God bless her!
Yes, as you can tell, I’m a Hollywood aficionado.
I was so proud when years ago I was the publicist for film stars like Elke Sommer whom I’d be driving to media interviews from New York to Nuremberg.
Or escorting Bing Crosby’s wife Kathryn to events in her native state of Texas or to interviews where my PR firm TransMedia Group was then based, Manhattan, as we were promoting her new book “My Life with Bing” worldwide.
At the Crosby golf tournaments, I kept running into Bing’s buddies like Bob Hope and a host of other celebs including legendary football coach John Madden. Whenever we shook hands, his huge mitt would swallow mine.
And I loved hanging out in Beverly Hills as you’d never know what movie stars who you’d see next. Seated at a restaurant table there once, I was only a few feet from Citizen Kane, Orson Welles.
Then one Sunday morning I was attending Mass at the Church of the Good Shepherd there and who do you think was the usher collecting donations in the very pew in which I was kneeling on that memorable day?
OMG, it was the “Scarecrow” himself, Ray Bolger.
Naturally, I dropped whatever wad I had on me into his basket that made him smile. It was a Wizard of Oz moment I shall never forget!
But I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for film actresses and certainly Eva Marie Saint exuded such warmth; was so genuinely real in the costarring roles she played on the big screen opposite Hollywood’s greatest actors.
While I’m glad that she had a sparkling film career and such a lengthy life, I’m so sorry she’s gone and like many others, I’ll miss her.
Before he went into journalism and later into public relations, Tom Madden was an actor himself, appearing off-Broadway in plays and in summer stock. These days when he’s not writing articles, books and blogs, Madden’s running TransMedia Group, the PR firm he started years ago when he left NBC, together with today the firm’s illustrious president, his daughter Adrienne Mazzone.
