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‘The Yearling’ and ‘Rio Grande’ Star Claude Jarman Jr. Dead at 90

CultureCelebs
By Craig Garrett
January 14, 2025 | 7:56 a.m. CST
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Photo by Ralf Liebhold / MGM/ Shutterstock

Claude Jarman Jr., the child actor who captured hearts in the 1946 classic The Yearling and later shared the screen with John Wayne in the 1950 western Rio Grande, has passed away.

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Jarman passed away peacefully in his sleep from natural causes at his home in Kentfield, California, according to his wife of 38 years, Katie, who shared the news with The Hollywood Reporter. He was 90 years old.

Born on September 27, 1934, Jarman was just 10 years old when his life took an unexpected turn. The son of a Nashville railroad accountant, he was in his fifth-grade classroom on Valentine’s Day in 1945 when The Yearling director Clarence Brown, scouting schools across the South for young talent for The Yearling, walked through the door.

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

In The Yearling, he played Jody Baxter, the son of characters portrayed by Gregory Peck and Jane Wyman, based on Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ Pulitzer Prize-winning novel from 1939. Filming in Florida took nearly two years and included a difficult scene with a deer that required 115 takes. Jarman even walked down Fifth Avenue in New York to promote the film with a deer on a leash.

Claude Jarman Jr. Receives an Academy Award for ‘The Yearling’

In 1947, at the Oscars held at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, Shirley Temple presented the Juvenile Academy Award to Jarman. He became the seventh recipient of the miniature trophy, 12 years after Temple, who was the first to receive the honor. Years later, the Academy presented Jarman with a full-sized Oscar, and he proudly displayed both awards in his home.

He attended school on the MGM lot alongside notable classmates such as Elizabeth Taylor and Dean Stockwell. During the filming of Roughshod at RKO, he shared lessons with Natalie Wood. At MGM, he portrayed a young Van Johnson in the 1947 film High Barbaree.

In April 1949, he joined over four dozen MGM legends, including Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Angela Lansbury, Errol Flynn, Judy Garland, and even Lassie, for a historic photograph celebrating the studio’s 25th anniversary.

Jarman was the last surviving individual from that memorable image.

Claude Jarman Jr. Stars Alongside John Wayne

In 1949, Jarman appeared in several notable films, including The Sun Comes Up with Jeanette MacDonald (and Lassie), Roughshod as a fugitive rancher’s brother, and Intruder in the Dust, where he played a young man fighting to prove the innocence of a Black man in a story based on William Faulkner’s novel.

A year later, he took on the role of a cavalry officer’s son, portrayed by John Wayne, in John Ford’s Rio Grande (1950).

In 1950, Jarman went back to Nashville to finish high school before making his film debut in Hangman’s Knot (1952). After earning his degree from Vanderbilt University in 1956, he went on to co-star with Fess Parker in The Great Locomotive Chase.

He returned to Los Angeles as a publicist for the Armed Forces, collaborating with studios to produce films about the Navy. In 1963, he relocated to San Francisco to work for the John Hancock Insurance Company.

From 1965 to 1980, Jarman led the San Francisco International Film Festival. In 2019, he was honored with the festival’s George Gund III Craft of Cinema Award. Jarman also produced a 1972 documentary about music promoter Bill Graham and the Fillmore Auditorium. His final acting role was in the 1978-79 NBC miniseries Centennial.

In 2018, he published his memoir, My Life and the Final Days of Hollywood.

He is survived by his wife, his third, along with his children: Claude III, Murray, Elizabeth, Vanessa, Natalie, Sarah, and Charlotte, as well as eight grandchildren. He will be laid to rest in Nashville, with a celebration of his life being planned in San Francisco.