Los Angeles, Jan. 13 -- 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, has passed away.

Jarman was 90 when he breathed his last recently. His wife Katie told The Hollywood Reporter that Claude Jarman Jr. died in his sleep of natural causes at his Marin County home in Kentfield, California.

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 W...