roadway (for 39 performances). Her  touching and beautifully sensitive performance,  as one New York critic described it, won the approbation of Elia Kazan, who cast her opposite Marlon Brando in  On the Waterfront  in a role coveted by many more experienced actresses.

The 1954 Budd Schulberg drama was nominated for 12 Oscars and won eight including best picture, actor, director and, for Saint, supporting actress.

Rather than tie herself to a studio contract, however, she returned to the theater in stock productions of  The Rainmaker  and  Desire Under the Elms. 

In 1956 she took on the glamorous female lead in  That Certain Feeling  opposite Bob Hope, followed by the 1957 film version of  A Hatful of Rain  and  Raintree County. 

After  North by Northwest,  she appeared in  Exodus  and  All Fall Down.  The latter, directed by John Frankenheimer and co-starring Warren Beatty, saw her give one of her best dramatic performances.

She was the numinous but scorned wife in 1965's Elizabeth Taylor-Richard Burton adultery tale  The Sandpiper  and then appeared in a better vehicle, Norman Jewison's comedy  The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming,  in 1966. Her performance in  Loving,  co-starring with George Segal, was highly regarded and rated with her best work. Other roles include  36 Hours  and  Grand Prix.  Except for another Hope comedy,  Cancel My Reservation,  she spent most of the next two decades on TV and onstage.

On Broadway she acted in  The Lincoln Mask  in 1972 and then, opposite Henry Fonda, in  The First Monday in October  in 1979. In 1983 she appeared in a Chicago production of  Duet for One.  Her television credits include  School for Bachelors,   A Carol for Another Christmas,    The First Woman President,   Mrs. Epenshade,   Taxi  and miniseries  How the West Was Won.  The latter two roles also brought Emmy nominations.

Saint received good critical notices for  A Christmas to Remember  with Jason Robards,  When Hell Was in Session,   The Curse of King Tut's Tomb,   The Best Little Girl in the World,   Malibu,   My Antonia  and  Jane Doe,  among other roles.

The actress had a recurring role on the ABC series  Moonlighting,  starring Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis, as Shepherd's mother.

In 1986 she returned to the bigscreen with a role in the Tom Hanks-Jackie Gleason vehicle  Nothing in Common. 

Saint appeared in many TV movies throughout the 1990s, including roles in  I'll Be Home for Christmas,   Kiss of a Killer,   After Jimmy  and  Open House,  along with a cameo as Roz's mother in  Frasier.  After four previous Emmy nominations, Saint finally took the statuette with a supporting actress Emmy win in 1990 for her role in the NBC miniseries  People Like Us. 

Saint returned to film again in the 2000s, appearing in pics such as  I Dreamed of Africa  (2000),  Because of Winn-Dixie  and  Don't Come Knocking  (2005) and 2006's  Superman Returns,  in which she played Martha Kent. In 2014 she made her final bigscreen appearance, in the Akiva Goldsman written and directed  Winter's Tale. 

Saint was born in Newark, N.J.; the family later moved to Delmar, N.Y., near Albany. With plans to become a teacher, Saint attended Ohio's Bowling Green State U., where she became interested in acting. After receiving her B.A., she turned full time to seeking acting work, first in radio. She received her first paycheck, $10, as an off-camera applauder on  The Borden Show.  To make ends meet, she did some modeling and then landed roles in radio serials such as  Rosemary  and  Young Doctor Malone. 

In 1947 she was cast in  Mister Roberts  only to be reduced to an understudy when director Joshua Logan didn't think she had enough experience. Jocelyn Brando played the roles. A year later she began studying at the Actors Studio.

A testament to her ability to straddle both the film and television world, Saint has two separate stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for motion pictures and one for TV. Saint took time to pay homage to  North by Northwest  by hosting TCM documentary  The Making of North by Northwest  in 2000.

She also appeared in the 2003 documentary  Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There  and the 2011 docu  Broadway: Beyond the Golden Age. 

Saint appeared at the 81st Academy Awards in 2009 to present the Oscar for supporting actress, some 55 years after her  Waterfront  win.

She was a longtime supporter of the Motion Picture and Television Fund and the Epilepsy Foundation of Los Angeles. An early proponent of making cars cell-phone-free, she created and distributed her own bumper sticker:  Get Off The Phone Or Get Off The Road.  She also served on the Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship Committee of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts   Sciences.

Her husband, TV director Jeffrey Hayden, died in 2016.

Survivors include her two children, Darrell and Laurette, four grandchildren, Eli, Tyler, Molly, and Stella and two great grandchildren, Arlo and Finley.