Best Actor Oscar Winners in the 1940s

Lanky, lovable Stewart took the honors for his lanky, lovable reporter in the witty classic. A great performance from a beloved star, true, but I don’t think it quite equaled Charles Chaplin’s genius in two roles for The Great Dictator. Stewart also won out over Henry Fonda in The Grapes of Wrath, Laurence Olivier in Rebecca and Raymond Massey in Abe Lincoln in Illinois. Cary Grant went without a nomination for two fine performances in The Philadelphia Story and His Girl Friday, as did W.C Fields for his immortal turn as the town drunk in The Bank Dick.

Orson Welles was infamously defeated in his sole acting nomination for Citizen Kane, as Oscar snubbed the film itself for Best Picture and Welles again for Best Director. True, Cooper was charming in the sweet-natured biopic of WWI hero Sergeant York, but it was no Citizen Kane. Cooper also bested Robert Montgomery in Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Cary Grant in Penny Serenade and Walter Huston in All That Money Can Buy. The academy overlooked two great Humphrey Bogart performances, in the ur-film noir Maltese Falcon, and his lesser-known but powerful performance in High Sierra.

Better known as a big-screen gangster, Cagney danced and sang his way to the first Best Actor award given to a man in a musical role, the life of George M. Cohan. He came out ahead of Gary Cooper’s poignant performance in yet another biopic, as The Pride of the Yankees, Lou Gehrig. Cagney also beat Walter Pidgeon as the husband in 1941’s Best Picture, Mrs. Miniver, and Monty Woolley in The Pied Piper. In a great year for movies, snubs included: Errol Flynn in Gentleman Jim; Jack Benny in To Be or Not to Be; and Joel McCrea in Sullivan’s Travels.

In a good-but-not-great movie, Lukas snuck the top prize out from under Humphrey Bogart in the immortal Casablanca. Go figure. Another of Ingrid Bergman’s costars that year also lost - Gary Cooper in the Spanish Civil War tragedy For Whom the Bell Tolls, along with Mickey Rooney in The Human Comedy and Walter Pidgeon in Madame Curie. Joel McCrea, a fine actor who was never nominated for an Oscar, was snubbed again in 1943 for The More the Merrier, while his costar Charles Coburn won the Best Supporting Actor prize for the same film.

Not a great film, but extremely popular, Going My Way earned seven Oscars in 1944, including Best Actor for uber-popular singer Bing Crosby as Father O’Malley. He beat costar Barry Fitzgerald, who oddly enough won the Best Supporting Actor prize. (It was the only time an actor was nominated in two categories for the same role – the academy changed the rules to prevent it thereafter.) Crosby’s win also left Cary Grant at 0-2 after his final career nomination for None But the Lonely Heart; topped Charles Boyer’s suave villain in the psychological thriller Gaslight, and beat Alexander Knox as Wilson in the presidential biopic. Incredibly, Fred MacMurray was ignored for his work in one the great film noirs of all time, Double Indemnity.

Milland’s courageous performance as an increasingly desperate alcoholic with writer’s block and, eventually, a nasty case of the DTs took the honors for The Lost Weekend, which also won Best Picture. Milland outdistanced enormously popular hoofer Gene Kelly as a happy-go-lucky sailor in Anchors Aweigh; Gregory Peck in The Keys of the Kingdom, and Cornel Wilde in A Song to Remember. Milland also topped Bing Crosby’s reprise of his 1944 winning role as Father O’Malley in The Bells of St. Mary’s. Oscar ignored Humphrey Bogart in To Have and Have Not, as well as John Wayne in They Were Expendable.

Once again an affecting portrayal of an alcoholic won out, with Frederic March as one of the three troubled veterans returning from WWII in The Best Years of Our Lives. March beat out James Stewart for his now legendary performance as George Bailey in the beloved holiday classic It’s a Wonderful Life, along with Laurence Olivier in Henry V, Gregory Peck in The Yearling and Larry Parks in The Jolson Story. Inexplicable omissions in 1946 included Cary Grant as an American agent in Alfred Hitchcock’s thrilling Notorious, and Humphrey Bogart for his wise-cracking gumshoe in The Big Sleep.

Oscar finally caught up with Ronald Colman in 1947, giving him the award for his role as a disturbed actor with a split personality. The pick was generally seen as an award for a long and successful career, not this particular performance. Colman beat out Gegory Peck’s leading role in Gentleman’s Agreement, the 1947 Best Picture winner; William Powell’s charming turn in Life With Father; John Garfield in Body and Soul; and Michael Redgrave in Mourning Becomes Electra. The big omission in 1947 was Charlie Chaplin for Monsieur Verdoux, and perhaps Rex Harrison as the irascible shade of a sea captain in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.

Sir Larry was nominated ten times for amazing performances throughout his long and illustrious career, but Hamlet gave him his only win. It was a year of odd, mostly forgettable choices in the Best Actor category, with Olivier besting Lew Ayres for his smallish role in Johnny Belinda, along with Clifton Webb in Sitting Pretty (the movie ancestor of TV’s Mr. Belvedere); Montgomery Clift in The Search; and Dan Dailey in When My Baby Smiles at Me. Humphrey Bogart was just plain robbed by the academy’s failure to nominate him for his role as the greedy, mad prospector in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Edward G. Robinson deserved a nod as a gangster in the tense thriller Key Largo, as did John Wayne as a cattleman in Red River.

Crawford won a well-deserved Oscar for his journey from naïve idealist to corrupt political boss as Willie Stark, in the movie based on the life of Louisiana Senator Huey Long. John Wayne lost his first of two Oscar nods for Sands of Iwo Jima, and Gregory Peck missed his fourth nomination for Twelve O’Clock High, both excellent war films. The other two defeated nominees were Kirk Douglas as a tough boxer in Champion and Richard Todd as a dying Scotsman in The Hasty Heart. Oscar ended the decade with another inexplicable omission: James Cagney’s role as the irredeemable gangster in White Heat. “Top o’ the world, Ma!”