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Joan Lorring, 1945 Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee, dead at 88: One of the earliest surviving Academy Award nominees in the acting categories, Lorring was best known for holding her own against Bette Davis in ‘The Corn Is Green’ (photo: Joan Lorring in ‘Three Strangers’) Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nominee Joan Lorring, who stole the 1945 film version of The Corn Is Green from none other than Warner Bros. reigning queen Bette Davis, died Friday, May 30, 2014, in the New York City suburb of Sleepy Hollow. So far, online obits haven’t mentioned the cause of death. Lorring, one of the earliest surviving Oscar nominees in the acting categories, was 88. Directed by Irving Rapper, who had also handled one of Bette Davis’ biggest hits, the 1942 sudsy soap opera Now, Voyager, Warners’ The Corn Is Green was a decent if uninspired film version of Emlyn Williams’ semi-autobiographical 1938 hit play about an English schoolteacher,...

Joan Lorring, who was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Supporting Actress category for the 1945 film “The Corn Is Green,” died Friday at age 88, the Associated Press reports. Born in Hong Kong, Lorring left for the United States with her mother in 1939 to avoid the impending Japanese invasion, landing in San Francisco. In addition to “The Corn Is Green,” which starred Bette Davis and featured Lorring in the role of Bessie Watty, Lorre appeared in “Three Strangers” and “The Verdict.” Her television work included the 1996 TV movie “The Star Wagon,” whose cast also included Orson Bean...

Actor who made her name in comedy films as an acid-tongued, gravel-voiced tyrant

Eileen Brennan, who has died aged 80, had been a stage actor since the late 1950s, but it was as a largely comic presence in Us cinema of the 1970s and early 1980s that she was most widely admired. As the pitiless Captain Doreen Lewis, putting a dippy new recruit – Goldie Hawn – through her paces in the hit military comedy Private Benjamin (1980), she wore her trademark look: a solid frizz of red hair, a clenched, sneering smile and an expression of withering incredulity. Then there was the gravelly voice: a heard-it-all whine to match that seen-it-all face. It sounded like bourbon on the rocks. Actual rocks, that is.

Captain Lewis epitomised the sort of role Brennan was best at – and which she was still playing as late as 2001, when she made the first in a run of appearances...

Though she probably made the biggest splash – and scored an Oscar nomination in the process – for her role as Captain Lewis in Private Benjamin, actress Eileen Brennan enjoyed a long and varied career. She died on Sunday at the age of 80.An always-reliable performer noted for her husky voice and take-no-prisoners attitude to both life and performing, she was born Verla Eileen Regina Brennen in 1932 and grew up in Los Angeles. After studying at Georgetown University, she took acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, paying her way through work as a singing waitress while performing in summer stock during the holidays.She scored various stage roles, and won an Obie Award for her leading performance in 1959’s Little Mary Sunshine. Brennan followed that up with roles in The Miracle Worker and The King And I.Television would follow in the 1960s, with work on The Star Wagon...