Best Actor, 1946

Awards presented March 13, 1947

The nominees were ... 

• Fredric March in The Best Years of Our Lives 
• Laurence Olivier in Henry V 
• Larry Parks in The Jolson Story 
• Gregory Peck in The Yearling 
• James Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life 

... when they should have been ... 

• Dana Andrews in The Best Years of Our Lives 
• Jean-Louis Barrault in Children of Paradise 
• Henry Fonda in My Darling Clementine 
• Cary Grant in Notorious 
• Trevor Howard in Brief Encounter 

And the Oscar went to ... 

Fredric March in The Best Years of Our Lives. 

At fifty-one, March was too old for his role as the serviceman returning from the war to his boring job at the bank, and the nomination really should have gone to Dana Andrews, whose role was richer and performance deeper. But March brought his usual integrity to the part, and won his second Oscar, fourteen years after the first. 

... when it should have gone to ... 

Cary Grant in Notorious. 

Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant in Notorious 

This seems to me one of Grant's greatest performances, a conscious tamping-down of his famous charm and natural gift for comedy to become the icy, determined spy, while maintaining a steady ambiguity about the true nature of his feelings for Ingrid Bergman, the pawn in his attempt to uncover a spy ring. That the film received only two nominations -- admittedly deserved ones, for Claude Rains's supporting performance and Ben Hecht's screenplay -- remains one of the Academy's indelible blemishes. It began as a David O. Selznick production, but Selznick got so involved in his would-be blockbuster Duel in the Sun that he farmed the film out to RKO, and director Alfred Hitchcock wound up as his own producer. This left the film without a powerful backer: RKO was in financial difficulties, and was also releasing Samuel Goldwyn's The Best Years of Our Lives and Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, and both Goldwyn and Capra had the kind of clout with the Academy that Hitchcock never possessed.    

Best Actor, 1931-32

Awards presented November 18, 1932
(Films released from August 1, 1931 through July 31, 1932 were eligible.)

The nominees were ... 

• Wallace Beery in The Champ 
• Alfred Lunt in The Guardsman 
• Fredric March in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 

... when they should have been ... 

• John Barrymore in Grand Hotel 
• Paul Muni in Scarface 
• Edward G. Robinson in Five Star Final 

And the Oscar went to ...

(Tie) Wallace Beery in The Champ and Fredric March in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. March led Beery by one vote, which under the Academy rules at that time constituted a tie. In fact, up to a three-vote difference would be ruled a tie; before Pricewaterhouse Coopers -- at that time just Price Waterhouse -- took over the balloting in 1934, the Academy seemed to want a sizable margin of error. (Today, only an identical number of votes counts as a tie.) Beery had worked steadily as a heavy or a comic in silent pictures, starting in 1913, including a series of one-reel shorts in which he played a drag role: Sweedie, the Swedish maid. He became a star with the arrival of sound, though he owed his stardom to two women: Screenwriter Frances Marion had teamed him with Marie Dressler in Min and Bill and Tugboat Annie; Marion had also written the role in The Big House that earned Beery his first Oscar nomination. The teaming with Dressler ended with her death in 1934, after which Beery returned to supporting roles. March, who would go on to a long screen career, winning a second Oscar for The Best Years of Our Lives, had been discovered by a Paramount scout in a touring production of The Royal Family, in which he parodied John Barrymore. He earned his first Oscar nomination when he re-created that role on screen. 

... when it should have gone to ... 

John Barrymore in Grand Hotel: 

with Joan Crawford

with Greta Garbo 

 Unlike his brother, Lionel, and his sister, Ethel, John Barrymore never won an Oscar. He was never even nominated for one. He had been acclaimed as a stage actor, particularly as Shakespeare's Richard III and Hamlet, but we have only the reviews to go by. His one turn at Shakespeare on screen was in the 1936 MGM Romeo and Juliet, with its superannuated teenagers:  thirty-six-year-old Norma Shearer as Juliet, forty-four-year-old Leslie Howard as Romeo, and fifty-four-year-old Barrymore as Mercutio. Even so, we have glimpses there of what Barrymore may have been like in his prime: His performance is amusingly over-the-top, containing the energy that the rest of the movie sorely needs. He had made silent films starting in 1914, but after a 1925 appearance as Hamlet in London, he gave up the stage and joined Lionel in Hollywood, where his good looks and rakish ways fit right in. His finest screen performance is probably in 1934's Twentieth Century, in which director Howard Hawks, the screenplay by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur (plus some uncredited work by Preston Sturges), and an uninhibited performance by Carole Lombard brought out the madcap best in Barrymore. Grand Hotel, of course, is melodramatic to the point of absurdity, but Barrymore gives it a center and a measure of credibility, especially in his scenes with Garbo, Crawford, and particularly his brother, Lionel. Eventually, Barrymore's alcoholism began to destroy his career, however, and at the end he was playing small roles in throwaway movies, unable to memorize lines and relying on cue cards to get through his scenes.