Eva Marie Saint, one of the immortals, radiated old-school Hollywood glamour

Another beacon of Hollywood’s postwar golden age goes out with the death of Eva Marie Saint at the mighty age of 102. She was, at the time of her death, the earliest surviving Oscar winner. Awarded the best supporting actress prize in 1954 for her breakthrough turn in Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront, she exhibited a seriousness of purpose that proved vital opposite Marlon Brando in that famously gritty dockside drama. But she also radiated old-school glamour, never more so than when she gleamed beside Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock’s indestructible North by Northwest from 1959.

That director was a famously tough taskmaster, but leading women from three successive Hitch films in that period have proved resilient. Kim Novak, star of Vertigo from 1958, is still with us at 93. Vera Miles, who dominates the second half of Psycho from 1960, is still aloft at 96.