Cinecon 54 Guests

She grew up in Albany and Delmar, New York and attended Bowling Green State University in Ohio, planning to become a schoolteacher. She tried out for a school play at the suggestion of the university's drama professor and won the leading role. It changed the direction of her life. The university has honored her with an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree and renamed its main campus theatre The Eva Marie Saint Theatre. Upon graduation she went to New York City and studied at The American Theatre Wing and with Lee Strasberg at The Actors Studio. She appeared in The Trip to Bountiful (1953) on Broadway, receiving the Drama Critics Award and Outer-Circle Critics Award for her performance. Director Elia Kazan saw her in the play and cast her in On The Waterfront.

In television, Ms. Saint has earned five Emmy nominations starting with one for Paddy Chayefsky’s Middle of the Night for The Philco Television Playhouse (1954) then for the live TV musical adaptation of Thorton Wilder’s Our Town (1955), the Hallmark Hall Of Fame: Taxi!! (1978), mini-series How the West Was Won (1977). And in 1990, her fifth nomination led to an award for the mini-series People Like Us. Other TV credits include Moonlighting and TV movies When Hell Was In Session (1979), Best Little Girl In The World (1981), Fatal Vision (1984), A Year in the Life (1986), I’ll Be Home for Christmas (1988), the Titanic mini-series (1996), Time To Say Goodbye? (1997), and Open House (2003). She also was a recurring character in the animated series The Legend of Korra (2012-2014). Ms. Saint was a presenter at the 81st Annual Academy Awards in 2009 and the 90th Academy Awards in 2018, among many other occasions.

In addition to The Trip to Bountiful, she starred on the New York stage and on major stages across America in many notable plays The Lincoln Mask, Duet for One, First Monday In October, Summer and Smoke, The Rainmaker, Candida and Desire Under The Elms. She received the L.A. Dramalogue Award for her performance in The Country Girl. Saint and her late husband, director Jeffrey Hayden, produced a critically acclaimed production of August Wilson’s Fences (directed by Hayden) at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles in Summer 2006. The couple regularly performed A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters as well as an evening of Willa Cather’s On The Divide in theatres around the country. Saint and Hayden also produced the PBS television documentaries Primary Colors: The Story of Corita (1991), which she narrated, and Children in America’s Schools with Bill Moyers (1996) for which they won an Emmy.

Among her many charitable works, Saint has been a longtime supporter of the Motion Picture and Television Fund and the Epilepsy Foundation of Los Angeles. In addition, she serves on the Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship Committee of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

Saint had been married to Jeffrey Hayden for 65 years. He died in December 2016. They have two children, Darrell and Laurette. This in turn, has brought them four grandchildren, Tyler Dean, Molly Jo, Eli, and Stella Pearl.

Eva Marie Saint will be joining us at a screening of one of her films on Friday August 31, 2018

CORA SUE COLLINS
She was born in West Virginia and came to Hollywood with her mother and older sister when she was three. She was discovered while visiting in Hollywood and invited to audition at Universal studios. She made her first film, The Unexpected Father, at the age of 4 beating out several other child actors for the part. MGM soon signed her to a contract and she became part of the studio system. As with many other young actors they trained her and guided her career. They also loaned her out to other studios and she ended up working for nearly every studio in Hollywood: Warner Bros., Universal, First National, Fox, Columbia, Paramount, Republic and Mascot. Being such a pretty little girl she was often chosen to play the lead actress as a child. This started with her second film The Strange Case of Clara Deane (1932) where she played star Frances Dee's character. She was chosen by Greta Garbo herself to play her character as a child in Queen Christina (1933). Other actresses she played were Norma Shearer in Smilin’ Through (1932), Claudette Colbert in Torch Singer (1933), Sylvia Sidney in Jennie Gerhardt (1933), Zita Johann in The Sin of Nora Moran (1933), Dorothy Lee in Without Children (1935), Merle Oberon in The Dark Angel (1935) and Lynn Bari in Blood and Sand (1941). She was a patient to Peter Lorre's doctor in his first American film Mad Love (1935), played William Powell & Myrna Loy's daughter in Evelyn Prentice (1934) and she was seen in glorious Technicolor in the 1934 short The Spectacle Maker. Other notable titles among her 45 films include Prizefighter and the Lady (1933), As the Earth Turns(1934), Treasure Island (1934), The Scarlet Letter (1934), Anna Karenina (1935), Magnificent Obsession(1935), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938), All This, and Heaven Too (1940) Roughly Speaking (1945) and her final film Week-End at the Waldorf (1945). In addition to films she appeared on Broadway in a show called Junior Miss and also did a radio show for a year with Lionel Barrymore.

At the age of 18 she decided that she had had enough of acting and told Louis B. Mayer that she wanted out of her contract. He told her that she would regret it but she didn't and never made another film. Cora Sue married and raised three children and has lived a happy life in Europe, Mexico and in Los Angeles since her movie days. Besides her family she has kept busy with many endeavors including various charity works. Although she left films she stayed friends throughout the years with many of the people, adults and children, that she worked with.

Cora Sue Collins will be joining us for a screening of her very first film The Unexpected Father.