Claude Jarman, Jr. will always be remembered best for his role in the 1946 MGM Technicolor family drama “The Yearling,” a story about a backwoods boy who befriends a fawn. But he gets the most fan letters about working with John Wayne in the western “Rio Grande,” the third film in director John Ford’s famous cavalry trilogy.

“I can always tell when it has been on TV because I get a ton of letters about it,” Jarman said. “People still remember “Rio Grande” and you have a lot of John Ford and John Wayne fans out there. It was a great experience and really the highlight of my film career.”

Jarman will be appearing at the Mid-South Film Festival this week in Olive Branch where he will sign autographs and share stories about “The Yearling” and “Rio Grande” and his days as a child actor during the “Golden Age of Hollywood.”

Jarman was 10 years old and living in Nashville when he got the role in “The Yearling.” Director Clarence Brown and MGM conducted a talent search looking for an unknown actor to play the role of Jody in the movie based on Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings book.

Jarman said Brown, who was from the South, visited different schools in Birmingham, Atlanta, Memphis, Knoxville, and Nashville looking for an authentic southerner for the role.

Jarman was in the fifth grade when Brown visited his school on Valentine’s Day in 1945. 

“He came to my classroom and saw me and wanted to talk to me,” Jarman said. “I was at the chalkboard at the time. He asked me if I was interested in going to Hollywood to make a movie.”

Jarman’s only acting experience had been in school plays and some community theater.

“He ended up coming to my house later that day and wanted to take some pictures of me to send to Sydney Franklin, the producer,” Jarman said. “He said I had the look he was looking for.”

Brown called back three days later and told him to come to Hollywood for a screen test. “The Yearling” would take nearly two years to film. Jarman said the movie, which was shot on location in Florida, was difficult to make because it required a lot of retakes.

“I started when I was 10 and finished when I was 12,” Jarman recalled. “It took a long time because we were working with animals. There were times when we had to do over 100 takes because the deer wouldn’t follow. You can’t train a deer. You just had to keep doing it over and over and over.”

Jarman said Brown was a lot of fun to work with. He would take him on walks every night to prepare him for the next day of shooting.

“He was very nice to me,” Jarman said.

Jarman also has fond memories of co-star Gregory Peck, who he said was fabulous to work with.  

“He had only just started his career,” Jarman said. “He had been in “The Keys to the Kingdom” and had just filmed “Duel in the Sun,” which hadn’t come out yet. He was a joy to work with.”

Jarman lost touch with Peck over the years, but said he saw him backstage at the 1995 Academy Awards show where all of the past winners were on stage together.

“I hadn’t seen him in 40 years,” Jarman said. “So I went over and said hello to him. He took me over to meet his wife and said ‘this is my son.’ He was just a wonderful person.”

Jarman signed a five year contract with MGM and had his own dressing room, makeup man and wardrobe assistant. He went to school in-between filming on the lot where his classmates were other child actors like Elizabeth Taylor, Margaret O’Brien and Dean Stockwell.

“It was a little two room school house,” Jarman said. “It was quite a group.”

Jarman followed up “The Yearling” with “High Barbaree” in 1947 with Van Johnson and June Allyson, then starred in “Intruder in the Dust,” which is his personal favorite.

The movie was directed by Clarence Brown and is based on a William Faulkner novel about a black man who is unjustly accused of murdering a white man. Jarman plays a teenager ,who along with the town lawyer and and elderly woman, try to prove his innocence.

Jarman said MGM didn’t want to make the movie and quietly buried  it.

“It was a movie that Clarence Brown, one of their top directors, wanted to make,” Jarman said. “MGM and studio head Louis B. Mayer did not want to make it. They weren’t making movies like that in 1949. They were making movies like “Meet Me in St. Louis” and all those musicals. They didn’t know what to do with it. They didn’t promote it and it never got any traction.”

The movie was shot on location in Oxford, Mississippi. University of Mississippi made a documentary called “When We Were Extras” about the making of the film, and several extras who appeared in the movie will also make an appearance at the festival to share their memories.

“The jail that you see, that was the real jail in Oxford,” Jarman said. “The people that you see, those were the real people of Oxford.”

Jarman said “Intruder in the Dust” has since been rediscovered over the years and is now popular at film noir festivals where it has received the acclaim that it deserves.

“That’s a movie that I am very proud of,” Jarman said. “It has a following now at film festivals around the country which is gratifying to me.”

Jarman made a total of six movies for MGM from 1945 to 1950 including the westerns “Roughshod” with Gloria Graham, and “The Outriders” with Joel McCrea, Arlene Dahl, and Barry Sullivan.

“I loved riding horses and being outdoors,” Jarman said. “But I really didn’t have much of a part and was anxious to finish it because I was supposed to go to Oxford for “Intruder in the Dust.” So that was kind of a throwaway movie.”

Jarman said his least favorite movie with MGM was “The Sun Comes Up” with Jeanette MacDonald and Lassie. The film was based on another Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings story. MacDonald plays an opera singer in New York whose son is killed. She decides to move away and get a fresh start in the mountains of North Carolina where she meets an orphan boy played by Jarman.

Jarman said the movie never lived up to expectations.

“I think they were secretly hoping for a sequel to “The Yearling,”” Jarman said. “Everyone had high hopes for it, but it didn’t live up to expectations. Time Magazine said even Lassie was bad.” 

By 1950, Jarman said he reached a point in his career where all child actors find it difficult to make the transition to more adult roles. He left Hollywood and returned home to Tennessee after his contract expired to finish high school and took on only a handful of acting jobs.

“It was a transition time for me,” Jarman said. “I was growing up. And the film industry was really changing. The studio system was shutting down and nobody knew how to do TV. I just wanted to finish school. I worked a little bit, but in Hollywood, they want to see you, and if I’m in Nashville they’re not going to call me. So I just dropped out of the movies.”

One phone call that he did get was from legendary director John Ford who wanted him to be in his upcoming western “Rio Grande” with John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara. “Rio Grande” was filmed in Moab, Utah and would turn out to be his favorite movie making experience.

“He called me about three weeks before we started shooting,” Jarman said. “He said he was making a cavalry picture and asked me if I had ever done any Roman riding before? It’s when you stand up on two horses with one foot on each horse. I said, no. He said ‘well, you’ve got three weeks to learn.’”

Jarman said he, Ben Johnson, and “Dobe” (Harry Carey, Jr.) spent the next three weeks learning how to do the stunt.

“Ben Johnson and Harry Carey Jr. were both excellent horsemen,” Jarman said. “We went to some ranch and all worked together and I did it. When you are 16 you can do a lot of things.”

Jarman said it was a once in a lifetime experience working for John Ford. The director had a stock company of actors that he used in all of his movies, but had a reputation for singling out a favorite actor who he was nice to, and one who he picked on mercilessly.

Jarman said he became Ford’s pet because he learned how to ride Roman style, and that Ben Johnson got singled out for abuse.

“I did the Roman riding so I was his favorite,” Jarman said. “I could do no wrong. The one who could do no right was Ben Johnson. Ben got the brunt of it. But, he took it in stride because they all loved him (Ford).”

Jarman spent more time on screen with Maureen O’Hara than he did with John Wayne, but said both actors were very professional and fun to work with.

“They were great to work with,” Jarman said. “Maureen was so beautiful and very sweet. Wayne was very professional and easy to work with. He always knew what he was doing. Being around all these guys and being able to ride horses, it was probably the most fun I had making a film.”

Jarman also likes to boast that he was the first person to shoot Lee Marvin in a movie in the 1952 Randolph Scott western “Hangmen’s Knot.”

“He is absolutely one of my favorites,” Jarman said. “I think it was either Lee’s first or second movie. He was quite a character. He was a former Marine and a tough guy, but he was hilarious and a real fun guy.”

Jarman was senior at Vanderbilt University at the time when he got a call to come to Georgia to play a small role in what would be his last movie, Walt Disney’s “The Great Locomotive Chase” with Fess Parker.

“I dropped out of that semester and had to make it up later to graduate,” Jarman said. “We made that movie in Clayton, Georgia, which is where they made that Burt Reynolds movie “Deliverance.” It was really the back woods. Walt Disney was there, which was interesting. And Fess Parker had great success as Davy Crockett and then went on to own hotels and a winery, and was a very successful businessman. I didn’t have a big part in it, but it was fun to work on.”

Jarman eventually left movie making altogether, graduated from Vanderbilt, and then served two years in the Navy, where he worked in public affairs with movie studios who were making movies about the Navy. He got married and in 1960 moved to his wife’s hometown in Birmingham, where he worked for an ad agency. In 1963, one of his client’s, John Hancock Insurance Company, hired him to work in their San Francisco office.

Jarman became involved with the San Francisco Film Festival in 1965  and helped grow the festival into a major cultural event.

“I sort of kept my hand in Hollywood,” Jarman said. “I ended up running it for 15 years. It was great because we did a lot of tributes to distinguished filmmakers. It was very easy for them to come to San Francisco from Los Angeles. We had everybody up there and would do afternoon tributes to everyone from John Ford to Henry and Jane Fonda. It was a fun event.”

He never was able though to convince Bing Crosby or Orson Welles to appear at the festival.

“Bing Crosby always downplayed his acting skills,” Jarman said. “He said ‘nah, none of my stuff was any good.’ So he wouldn’t do it. And Orson Welles? I tried to get him to come. He called me and left a message and said ‘This is Orson Welles. I can’t come to lunch today or ever.’”

Jarman returned to the screen one last time in a 1979 episode of the NBC TV miniseries “Centennial” based on the James Michener novel. He published a memoir in 2018 called “My Life in the Final Days of Hollywood” about his movie career.

Jarman said he doesn’t watch much television today or go to the movies anymore, and has little desire to act again should the phone ever ring.

“I can’t foresee that happening,” Jarman said. “So I don’t even think about acting. I can’t tell you what’s going on today with the movies. I’m not a fan of the big blockbusters. I still want to go see the new “Top Gun.” Movies like that I will see. But most of the movies they make today I’m not too interested in.”

He does, however, enjoy attending film festivals and meeting fans of  old classic movies.

“That’s why I come to these nostalgia festivals, because the people there really identify with that,” Jarman said. “You look at the crowd and they are people who are accustomed to going to the old time films and know them.”