Actor

1927-28
Who won: Emil Jannings in The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh
Who should have won: Buster Keaton in Steamboat Bill, Jr.

1928-29
Who won: Warner Baxter in In Old Arizona

1929-30
Who won: George Arliss in Disraeli
Who should have won: Maurice Chevalier in The Love Parade   

1930-31
Who won: Lionel Barrymore in A Free Soul 
Who should have won: Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar 

1931-32
Who won: Wallace Beery in The Champ and Fredric March in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (tie)
Who should have won: John Barrymore in Grand Hotel 

1932-33 
Who won: Charles Laughton in The Private Life of Henry VIII
Who should have won: Clark Gable in Red Dust

1934 
Who won: Clark Gable in It Happened One Night 
Who should have won: John Barrymore in Twentieth Century 

1935 
Who won: Victor McLaglen in The Informer
Who should have won: Roland Young in David Copperfield 

1936 
Who won: Paul Muni in The Story of Louis Pasteur 
Who should have won: Walter Huston in Dodsworth 

1937 
Who won: Spencer Tracy in Captains Courageous. 
Who should have won: Cary Grant in The Awful Truth. 

1938 
Who won: Spencer Tracy in Boys Town. 
Who should have won: James Cagney in Angels With Dirty Faces. 

1939 
Who won: Robert Donat in Goodbye, Mr. Chips 
Who should have won: James Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington 

1940 
Who won: James Stewart in The Philadelphia Story 
Who should have won: Cary Grant in His Girl Friday 

1941 
Who won: Gary Cooper in Sergeant York 
Who should have won: Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon

1942 
Who won: James Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy 

1943 
Who won: Paul Lukas in Watch on the Rhine
Who should have won: Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca

1944 
Who won: Bing Crosby in Going My Way
Who should have won: Dana Andrews in Laura

1945 
Who won: Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend

1946
Who won: Fredric March in The Best Years of Our Lives
Who should have won: Cary Grant in Notorious

1947 
Who won: Ronald Colman in A Double Life
Who should have won: John Garfield in Body and Soul

1948 
Who won: Laurence Olivier in Hamlet
Who should have won: Humphrey Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

1949 
Who won: Broderick Crawford in All the King's Men
Who should have won: James Cagney in White Heat