Oscar-Nominated Actress Joan Lorring Dead at 88

Joan Lorring

Joan Lorring, who was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in the 1945 film “The Corn Is Green,” died on Friday in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y. She was 88.

Her death was confirmed by her daughter Santha Sonenberg.

“The Corn Is Green” starred Bette Davis as an idealistic schoolteacher in a Welsh mining town. Ms. Lorring was nominated for an Oscar for her role as a scheming young woman, but lost to Anne Revere.

Joan Lorring was born Mary Magdalene Ellis in Hong Kong on April 17, 1926. She left for the United States with her mother in 1939 to escape the coming Japanese invasion.

The two settled in San Francisco, where Ms. Lorring started working in radio before going on to a career as a stage, screen and television performer. Her first film was the 1944 MGM production “Song of Russia.”

Ms. Lorring was also in two 1946 movies with Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre, “Three Strangers” and “The Verdict.”

She appeared on Broadway four times, most notably in “Come Back, Little Sheba,” with Shirley Booth, for which she won a Donaldson Award in 1950.

On television she was seen on the soap opera “Ryan’s Hope” as well as on “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “The Love Boat” and other prime-time series. She was also in “The Star Wagon,” a 1966 PBS production starring Orson Bean that included Dustin Hoffman in the supporting cast, and a 1956 television version of “The Corn Is Green,” in which she repeated her Oscar-nominated role.

In addition to her daughter Santha, Ms. Lorring is survived by another daughter, Andrea Sonenberg, and two grandchildren. Her husband, Dr. Martin Sonenberg, an endocrinologist, died in 2011.