Tattle: Eva Marie Saint recalls Hitch

OSCAR-WINNING actress

Eva Marie Saint

will be at the Prince Music Theater tonight for a screening of

Alfred Hitchcock

's classic 1959 romantic suspense film, "North By Northwest."

The movie, one of our five all-time faves (the others being "Singing in the Rain," "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," "The Ten Commandments" and "A Clockwork Orange") will be shown at 7:30, following an introduction by Eva Marie and Turner Classic Movies' Ben Mankiewicz. The free screening is part of TCM's 10-City Road to Hollywood Tour, sponsored by by TCM and Comcast.

Seeing the film again on the big screen was so exciting, Saint said earlier this week by phone. "I had the feeling I was seeing it for the first time."

Saint said that working with Hitchcock and Cary Grant was thrilling and that Hitch's reputation with women, especially blondes, seemed overplayed.

"I had just had my second baby" Saint said, "and he'd met my husband, whom he liked, so he treated me as an adult."

But a few years ago, Saint said, she was on a panel with other Hitchcock leading ladies, listening to their stories about working with the director.

"It was as if we were all married to the same man," she said, "and we all had a different take on him."

As for Grant, Saint said that she hasn't read much about the handsome leading man's sexual proclivities or his alleged dark side.

"I'm not fond of reading about other actors," she said. "He was such a classy fellow with a wonderful sense of humor who seemed to love life. He was sexy and charming and he could wear a suit."

Saint said that the forest confrontation with Grant's character is her favorite part of the film, but the more famous scene is where she and Grant are trapped on the face of Mount Rushmore.

"We were climbing on the [Rushmore] set over at MGM," she said. "I had no problem with heights, but when they put the mats down, I got a little nervous. I'd never climbed a mountain and I couldn't do it with my heels on so I took the heels off."

Saint didn't tell Hitchcock she was going shoeless, but it stayed in the film.

"Hitch didn't give much direction to actors," Saint said. He cast actors whom he knew were right for the part and then let them be.

Saint was right for a lot of parts. She won an Oscar for her supporting role in "On the Waterfront," and her 65-year career is still going strong with a voice role as Katara in "The Last Airbender: The Legend of Korra."

She said that she would love to do more voice-over work, but added that it was a little odd to be the only voice actor at the table-read who'd worked in both movies and theater.

While she's in town, Saint, who's been married since 1951 to filmmaker Jeffrey Hayden, hopes to visit Macy's near Broad Street. When she was a child, her father worked for B.F. Goodrich in Philadelphia, and he would meet her mother for lunch at Wanamaker's famed Crystal Tea Room.

Free tickets to tonight's screening may be obtained online at www.tcm.com/roadtohollywood.

* Although

Woody Harrelson

plays Republican strategist Steve Schmidt in the HBO movie "Game Change" he's not ready to start supporting the GOP.

"F--- no! The s--- those people say just makes me weep for humanity!" he tells Men's Journal.

* It's a good thing Lindsay

Lohan has stopped clubbing, because that means she couldn't have hit the manager of the Hookah Lounge with her new Porsche in the wee hours Wednesday morning. "This is all a complete lie. I've been at community service," Lohan tweeted on her official account. "These false accusations are absurd."

But "community service" after midnight makes perfect sense.

- Daily News wire services

contributed to this report.