Titter Top 10

Some Like It Hot - 1959 Tootsie - 1982 Dr Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb - 1964 Annie Hall - 1977 Duck Soup - 1933 Blazing Saddles - 1974 M*A*S*H - 1970 It Happened One Night - 1934 The Graduate - 1967 Airplane! - 1980

Some Like It Hot, Billy Wilder's 1959 classic starring Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe, was voted first for laughs.

It sees Lemmon and Curtis play musicians who witness a mob massacre and dress up as women to hide out with an all-girl band.

Tootsie, starring Dustin Hoffman, came in second. The 1982 movie from Sidney Pollock features Hoffman as a down-and-out actor who finds soap-opera success masquerading as a female.

Hoffman 's character found success dressed as a woman

Some 1,800 actors, directors and other film industry experts voted in the poll. Voters chose their funniest movies from a list of 500 nominees compiled by the institute.

Along with the poll leaders, two other cross-dressing films made it into the top 100. Mrs Doubtfire, starring Robin Williams dressed up as an eccentric housekeeper, came in at 67. Julie Andrews pretending to be a man in Victor/Victoria was at 76.

One movie industry expert confessed to being bemused by the AFI results.

"I can't figure it out. I guess with Americans in the year 2000, transgender is no longer transgressive," said Time magazine film critic Richard Schickel.

Victor/Victoria saw Julie Andrews dress up as a man

Third in the poll was Stanley Kubrick's Cold War masterpiece Dr Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, starring Peter Sellers.

Woody Allen's tale of New York Jewish angst Annie Hall was fourth ahead of the Marx Brothers' satirical war film Duck Soup, in which Groucho plays a prime minister.

Mel Brook's Blazing Saddles was sixth - a ground-breaking movie for its time about a black sheriff trying to keep law and order in the the "Old West".

Woody Allen was the most represented director

Making up the rest of the top 10 were Robert Altman's M*A*S*H, It Happened One Night starring Clark Gable, The Graduate, with Dustin Hoffman and Leslie Nielsen's Airplane!

Cary Grant was the most featured actor with eight films on the list while Katharine Hepburn and Margaret Dumont both had four films nominated. Woody Allen was the most represented director.