That - at least - was the choice in a poll of the industry professionals of the American Film Institute, set up as a responsible professional voice for Hollywood. But when they polled the US public, a very different favourite emerged.
This was the raucous, penis-fixated 1981 teen comedy Porky's, an epic of smalltown puberty best known for its "drill a hole in the wall of the girls' shower room" sequence. The film's enduring popularity is talked about with embarrassment in the industry.
Number two with the public was Dumb and Dumber (1994), marketed under the slogan "For Harry and Lloyd every day is a no-brainer". Neither film even reached the AFI's top 100.
In the AFI pantheon, Some Like It Hot (1959) - which is merely about cross-dressing -came out comfortably ahead of the industry's longer-established classics including the films of the Marx Brothers, Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Bob Hope.
Jack Lemmon, one of its co-stars, was also in the 17th ranked film, The Odd Couple (1968) and The Apartment (1960), rated 20th.
In an interview with Channel 4 specially recorded just before his death in June and to be shown as part of a three-hour programme about the poll on Saturday, Lemmon calls Some Like It Hot "the best comedy script I ever read, it may even be the best comedy ever made. I think Billy [Wilder, its director and writer] was at the top of his game in that".
The poll covered US films only. Another comedy about cross-dressing, Tootsie (1982) with Dustin Hoffman, was second choice for the AFI's membership of directors, producers, actors and cinematographers. Third was Stanley Kubrick's anti-nuclear satire Dr Strangelove (1964), fourth Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1977).
Fifth came the Marx Brothers Duck Soup (1933), sixth Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles (1974), seventh M*A*S*H (1970), eighth the 1934 romantic comedy It Happened One Night with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, ninth The Graduate (1967), also with Dustin Hoffman and tenth Airplane! (1980)
Mel Brooks - with his early film The Producers, currently a Broadway hit musical, at number 11 and Young Frankenstein at number 13 - emerged as the AFI's nearest thing to a modern classic of comedy.
Among the older classics, the Marx Brothers ranked next, scoring again with A Night at the Opera at 12th.
Buster Keaton's The General, at number 18, was rated above any film by Chaplin, who was spoken of in his 1920s and 1930s heyday as the greatest popular artist of his time.
Chaplin fails to score on the list until 25th place for The Gold Rush, regarded as the purest of his longer comedies. His more pretentious Modern Times is 33rd and his anti-Hitler satire The Great Dictator 37th.
Bob Hope, among the highest paid cinema and variety comedians of the 20th century, reaches only 78th place with The Road to Morocco. Apart from Annie Hall, Woody Allen has Manhattan at 46th and Bananas at 69th.
But the lustre of Cary Grant, a star since the 1930s wears well with three films in the top 20: Bringing Up Baby, The Philadelphia Story and His Girl Friday.
View the full lists
The 100 funniest - according to the American Film Institute
The 10 funniest - according to the punters
Derek Malcolm on America's comedy favourites
America's best laced with bloopers
