Best Actor, 1940

Awards presented February 27, 1941

The nominees were ... 

• Charles Chaplin in The Great Dictator 
• Henry Fonda in The Grapes of Wrath 
• Raymond Massey in Abe Lincoln in Illinois 
• Laurence Olivier in Rebecca 
• James Stewart in The Philadelphia Story 

... when they should have been ... 

• Charles Chaplin in The Great Dictator 
• Henry Fonda in The Grapes of Wrath 
• Cary Grant in His Girl Friday 
• Laurence Olivier in Rebecca 
• James Stewart in The Shop Around the Corner 

And the Oscar went to ... 

James Stewart in The Philadelphia Story. 

It's a great performance, but is it really in a leading role? After all, Cary Grant gets the girl and is the catalyst for all that happens in the story. Stewart's Oscar here is thought to have been at least partly for his performance in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington the previous year, when he lost to Robert Donat. He had been in Hollywood since the mid-1930s, and was an MGM contract player. But it was Frank Capra at Columbia who made Stewart a major star by casting him in You Can't Take It With You and Mr. Smith. His career was interrupted by service in World War II, but he returned in 1947 for Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. He was nominated for that film and two more, but never won a second Oscar. He received an honorary award in 1985. 

... when it should have gone to ... 

Cary Grant in His Girl Friday. 

It is, quite simply, one of the most fearless comic performances in movies: quick-witted, silver-tongued, unabashed in every respect. Grant could occasionally go over the top in this mode: Frank Capra let him do it in Arsenic and Old Lace, in which Grant pulls off double-takes that could snap a lesser person's neck and resorts once or twice too often to that whinny his characters sometimes do in exasperation. But director Howard Hawks knows how to keep things in balance, and Rosalind Russell knows how to keep Grant in check. They make a team that would be called peerless if we didn't have the evidence of Grant and Irene Dunne, or Grant and Katharine Hepburn, or Grant and Deborah Kerr, or Grant and Audrey Hepburn to show that it was a team with peers. He was, of course, unnominated, like all the rest of the gold in His Girl Friday.

Grant lays down the law as Walter Burns in His Girl Friday 

Best Actor, 1939

Awards presented February 29, 1940

The nominees were ... 

• Robert Donat in Goodbye, Mr. Chips 
• Clark Gable in Gone With the Wind 
• Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights 
• Mickey Rooney in Babes in Arms 
• James Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington 

... when they should have been ...  

• Charles Boyer in Love Affair 
• Henry Fonda in Young Mr. Lincoln 
• Clark Gable in Gone With the Wind 
• Cary Grant in Only Angels Have Wings  
• James Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington 

And the Oscar went to ... 

Robert Donat in Goodbye, Mr. Chips. 

Donat triumphed over one of the most famous performances in the history of movies, Clark Gable's Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind. But it has to be admitted that Donat gave the better performance: Gable was not particularly happy in his role, even though every reader of Margaret Mitchell's novel seems to have envisioned him in the part. He was aware that it was essentially a "woman's picture" (which is one of the reasons why he objected to George Cukor's directing it and held out for his friend Victor Fleming), and that Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Havilland, and Hattie McDaniel had the best parts in the movie. As Mr. Chips, Donat, a consummate professional, makes a meticulous passage from timorous young teacher to shy lover to devastated widower to beloved mentor. In his youth, Donat had looked like a strong rival for Laurence Olivier as both actor and matinee idol, and he had made a strong impression in the 1935 Alfred Hitchcock classic The 39 Steps and in his first Oscar-nominated role in The Citadel. But poor health -- a lifelong battle with asthma -- restricted his career. His post-Oscar performances were scattered, and his last screen appearance, just before his death at fifty-three, was in The Inn of the Sixth Happiness in 1958.

... when it should have gone to ... 

James Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. 

Stewart's performance as the naive young patriot Jefferson Smith was one of the year's most talked-about, and it's generally thought that his Oscar the following year, for what is essentially a supporting role in The Philadelphia Story, was a consolation prize for losing to Robert Donat. The movie itself lacks subtlety -- never a strong point of director Frank Capra's -- but Stewart's impassioned filibuster remains one of the great performances, largely because of Stewart's intrinsic credibility as an actor. He never goes over the top, even though the screenplay gives him every opportunity to do so. Ironically this great flagwaver, with its harangue about truth, justice, and the American way, got under the skin of some members of the U.S. Senate, and Capra (never the most reliable source) claimed that Joseph P. Kennedy, then the ambassador to Great Britain, tried to prevent the film's being exported.