Robert Donat managed to do the impossible when he beat out Clark Gable for the Academy Award for Best Actor. The competition was fierce for the award in 1939 and it came as quiet a shock when Donat won with "Goodbye, Mr.Chips" over Gable in "Gone With The Wind". Doant, was a bit of an oddity in the film world of his day. He was just a lovely man of British nationality, who was not a great debonair hero or a sarcastic wit. Donat only made twenty films over the course of his career. The small number being his unwillingness to work in America and his fragile health. His most famous fole was in Hitchcock's "39 Steps". Robert Donat died in 1958 at the age of 53. He had long suffered from chronic asthma.
