Monroe's comic caper named favourite film
Marilyn Monroe’s comic caper Some Like It Hot was named the favourite film of all time today.
The lightweight classic – featuring Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis as cross-dressing musicians on the run from gangsters – came in just ahead of the musical Grease.
Star Wars, which often figures highly as a movie great, failed to even make the top 10 in the Diet Coke poll.
Half the films in the list date back to the Sixties or earlier, while Some Like It Hot was made as long ago as 1959.
In the film Curtis and Lemmon are witnesses to a mob shooting and don disguises to pretend they are part of an all-female touring band, backing Sugar Kane (Monroe).
British director Sam Mendes’s multi-Oscar winner American Beauty is the most recent film, dating from 1999.
The oldest, It’s A Wonderful Life is from 53 years earlier.
The survey of 1,000 people was to get an idea of public favourites which will be screened at a mini movie festival, the Diet Coke Movie Weekend, at London’s Prince Charles Cinema from March 21 to 23.
The cinema’s manager Ben Freedman said: “Movies such as Some Like It Hot have a certain nostalgia value that reminds people of simpler and less stressful times, which is maybe why they have such enduring appeal.”
The top 10 favourites were as follows:
1. Some Like It Hot (1959)
2. Grease (1978)
3. Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)
4. Pretty Woman (1990)
5. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
6. American Beauty (1999)
7. Casablanca (1942)
8. The Sound of Music (1965)
9. Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)
10. Ghost (1990)
