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Claude Jarman Jr., Young Star of ‘The Yearling,’ Dies at 90
The Hollywood Reporter ^ | 1/12/25 | Mike Barnes

Posted on 01/13/2025 9:34:57 AM PST by Borges

Claude Jarman Jr., who received a Juvenile Academy Award for his heart-tugging performance as the boy who adopts an orphaned fawn in the 1946 MGM classic The Yearling, died Sunday. He was 90.

Jarman died in his sleep of natural causes at his Marin County home in Kentfield, California, his wife of 38 years, Katie, told THR‘s Scott Feinberg.

In films released in 1949, Jarman starred with Jeanette MacDonald in the Lassie movie The Sun Comes Up, played the brother of a rancher on the run (Robert Sterling) in Roughshod and reteamed with Yearling director Clarence Brown to portray a youngster out to prove the innocence of a Black man in Intruder in the Dust, based on the William Faulkner novel and filmed in Oxford, Mississippi.

A year later, he played the son of a cavalry officer (John Wayne) in John Ford’s Rio Grande (1950).

Born on Sept. 27, 1934, Jarman was the 10-year-old son of a Nashville railroad accountant when Brown came to his fifth-grade classroom on Valentine’s Day 1945 while randomly visiting schools in the South to scout kids for The Yearling.

“Next thing, they called three days later and said, ‘Get ready to leave for Hollywood in a week,'” Jarman recalled in a 2016 interview with Alan K. Rode for the Film Noir Foundation.

He was soon hired to play Jody Baxter, the lonely son of Gregory Peck and Jane Wyman’s characters, in The Yearling, adapted from the 1939 book by Pulitzer Prize winner Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.

He said it took about two years in Florida to finish the movie; one shot with a deer needed 115 takes to get on film. And to promote the feature, he once walked with a deer on a leash down Fifth Avenue in New York.

At the 1947 Oscars, Jarman was presented with his Juvenile Academy Award from Shirley Temple at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. He was the seventh youngster to get the miniature trophy, 12 years after Temple was the first. (Years later, the Academy gifted him with a regular-size Oscar, and he proudly displayed both in his home.)

Asked what he thought of his success in those early days during a 2014 interview with the Marina Times, Jarman replied, “I had nothing to compare it to. I thought, ‘Doesn’t everyone have this?’ I had my own dressing room, my own makeup person and wardrobe person.”

He attended school on the MGM lot, where his classmates included Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Powell, Margaret O’Brien and Dean Stockwell. And while he was making Roughshod at RKO, he and Natalie Wood studied together.

Back at MGM, he appeared in flashbacks as the younger version of Van Johnson’s character, a pilot lost at sea, in High Barbaree (1947).

In April 1949, he appeared with more than four dozen MGM stars, including Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Angela Lansbury, Errol Flynn, Esther Williams, Judy Garland and Lassie in a photo to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the studio. He was the last surviving person from that iconic shot.

Jarman returned to Nashville in 1950 to finish high school but appeared in Hangman’s Knot (1952), starring Randolph Scott, Donna Reed and Lee Marvin and directed by Roy Huggins. He graduated from Vanderbilt University in 1956, the same year he was seen in the Fess Parker-starring The Great Locomotive Chase.

He came back to L.A. as an Armed Forces publicist, working with studios to make movies about the Navy, then moved to San Francisco in 1963 as an employee for the John Hancock Insurance Co.

From 1965-80, Jarman headed the San Francisco International Film Festival. He received the fest’s George Gund III Craft of Cinema Award in 2019 for “elegantly leveraging his success as a young actor to promote the art of film, bringing together the industry and Bay Area community in ways that reverberate to this day.”

Jarman also produced a 1972 documentary about music promoter Bill Graham and the Fillmore Auditorium and acted one last time in the 1978-79 NBC miniseries Centennial.

His book, My Life and the Final Days of Hollywood, was published in 2018.

In addition to his wife (his third), survivors include his children, Claude III, Murray, Elizabeth, Vanessa, Natalie, Sarah and Charlotte, and eight grandchildren. He will be buried in Nashville, and a celebration of his life, to take place in San Francisco, is being planned.


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1 posted on 01/13/2025 9:34:57 AM PST by Borges
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To: Borges

Rest In Peace, Claude.


2 posted on 01/13/2025 9:36:19 AM PST by No name given ( Anonymous is who you’ll know me as)
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To: Borges

RIP
He did such a great job in The Yearling.


3 posted on 01/13/2025 9:36:45 AM PST by laplata (They want each crisis to take the greatest toll possiWe neve hear of gambling paying off $billioble.)
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To: Borges
What's for dinner?


4 posted on 01/13/2025 9:40:00 AM PST by jerod (Nazis were essentially Socialist in Hugo Boss uniforms... Get over it!)
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To: Borges

Just saw that a couple of moths ago.............EXCELLENT PERFORMANCE!.............


5 posted on 01/13/2025 9:41:48 AM PST by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegals are put up in 5 Star hotels....................)
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To: Borges

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Jarman_Jr.


6 posted on 01/13/2025 9:43:43 AM PST by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegals are put up in 5 Star hotels....................)
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To: jerod

Bad taste.


7 posted on 01/13/2025 9:44:11 AM PST by Borges
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To: Borges

I thought Jarman was an adult when he did “Rio Grande”, he was only 16 at the time.

That leaves only Carolyn Grimes (Margaret Mary) and Patrick Wayne (uncredited boy) left from the cast, other than extras.


8 posted on 01/13/2025 9:45:59 AM PST by chrisinoc
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To: jerod

We never had beef steak when I was a kid (1950s)...and deer meat was a real treat when hunting season rolled around.


9 posted on 01/13/2025 9:48:27 AM PST by Sacajaweau
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To: Borges

No....God’s gifts.


10 posted on 01/13/2025 9:49:55 AM PST by Sacajaweau
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To: Borges
Venison isn't so bad... If cooked right it 'taste' delicious.


11 posted on 01/13/2025 9:52:23 AM PST by jerod (Nazis were essentially Socialist in Hugo Boss uniforms... Get over it!)
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To: jerod

You certainly don’t know how to transport a deer.


12 posted on 01/13/2025 9:59:27 AM PST by laplata (They want each crisis to take the greatest toll possiWe neve hear of gambling paying off $billioble.)
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To: laplata

That’s how the proud hunters do it... They are happy with their kill and they show it off.


13 posted on 01/13/2025 10:04:54 AM PST by jerod (Nazis were essentially Socialist in Hugo Boss uniforms... Get over it!)
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To: Borges

Quite.


14 posted on 01/13/2025 10:18:43 AM PST by No name given ( Anonymous is who you’ll know me as)
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To: jerod

You’d be laughed out of town where I come from. We use our pickups. And we don’t spoil the meat from the heat coming through the hood and we don’t worry about cleaning up dried blood from the front of the car.


15 posted on 01/13/2025 10:43:26 AM PST by laplata (They want each crisis to take the greatest toll possiWe neve hear of gambling paying off $billioble.)
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To: jerod

That’s how the proud hunters do it... They are happy with their kill and they show it off.

><

After a while, good hunters don’t need to, or want to show off.


16 posted on 01/13/2025 10:51:47 AM PST by laplata (They want each crisis to take the greatest toll possiWe neve hear of gambling paying off $billioble.)
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To: jerod

Is the driver wearing a Shrek costume?


17 posted on 01/13/2025 11:38:54 AM PST by PLMerite ("They say that we were Cold Warriors. Yes, and a bloody good show, too. 😁 " - Robert Conquest )
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To: No name given

Was great with John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara in Rio Grande.


18 posted on 01/13/2025 11:44:09 AM PST by mware
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To: Borges

They could have a double feature with “Old Yeller.”

Garfield would approve.


19 posted on 01/13/2025 11:44:46 AM PST by PLMerite ("They say that we were Cold Warriors. Yes, and a bloody good show, too. 😁 " - Robert Conquest )
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To: No name given

I cried for three days after seeing The Yearling. Wonderful movie but never again.


20 posted on 01/13/2025 11:53:04 AM PST by truthkeeper
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