Some Like It Hot is Century’s Best Comedy

In third place was Stanley Kubrick’s Cold War masterpiece Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb, a film in which, while no one dresses up as a woman, Peter Sellers does get to dress up as a Henry Kissinger-like expert, and a well-meaning, but luckless American president.

Woody Allen’s tale of New York Jewish angst versus the rest of the country, Annie Hall, was in fourth place, just above the Marx Brothers’ satirical war-film Duck Soup, in which Groucho plays a prime minister. Blazing Saddles, Mel Brook’s ground-breaking tale of a black Sheriff trying to keep law and order in the Old West, was sixth, followed by Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H* in seventh; It Happened One Night starring Clark Gable in eighth; Dustin Hoffman’s The Graduate in ninth, and the wild low-brow collection of one-liners and sight-gags Airplane! in 10th spot.

Although not one of his films made it to the top 10, Cary Grant was the most represented actor with eight films on the list. The Marx Brothers and Woody Allen star in five; while Spencer Tracy, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Bill Murray each appear in four films. Katharine Hepburn and Margaret Dumont share the title of most represented actress in America’s funniest movies, each with four films.

Besides Annie Hall, four other Woody Allen films made it to the list, making him the most represented director with such greats as George Cukor, Charlie Chaplin and Preston Sturges in second place with four films each. Unlike AFI’s previous lists for Best American Films and Stars, in which some famous names seem to have missed the vote, critic Schickel said it seems that almost all of America’s great clowns and comics made it to the list from Buster Keaton to W.C. Fields to Jerry Lewis, Abbott and Costello, and even that comedian who never gets any respect, Rodney Dangerfield.