Woody Allen’s ‘Annie Hall’ Voted Funniest Screenplay of All Time

Woody Allen‘s groundbreaking 1977 comedy Annie Hall triumphed over 100 other films – including a handful of the director’s other works – to land at Number One on the Writers Guild of America’s list of the 101 Funniest Screenplays. The comedy’s Allen- and Marshall Brickman-penned script beat out a Top Five that included 1959’s Some Like It Hot (Number Two), 1993’s Groundhog Day (Three), 1980’s Airplane! (Four) and 1982’s Tootsie.

In total, Allen placed seven scripts on the 101 Funniest Screenplays list, with Sleeper, Bananas, Take the Money and Run, Love and Death, Manhattan and Broadway Danny Rose all landing in the lower half of the 101 scripts. The late Harold Ramis had five of his screenplays on the list, including two in the Top 10: Groundhog Dog and National Lampoon’s Animal House. Ghostbusters, Caddyshack and Stripes rounded out Ramis’ entries.

The Lady Eve director Preston Sturges also had four screenplays on the list. According to Variety, the WGA’s list was revealed at a Rob Reiner-hosted event at Los Angeles’ Arclight on Wednesday; Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap mockumentary was voted the 11th funniest screenplay.

Comedies on the 101 Funniest Screenplays list ranged in age from Charlie Chaplin’s 1925 classic The Gold Rush and Buster Keaton’s 1926 silent film The General to the list’s most recent entries: 2011’s Bridesmaids (Number 16, the highest-ranked post-2000 script) and 2009’s The Hangover. The latter finished at Number 30 just ahead of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Trading Places and The 40-Year Old Virgin.

Young Frankenstein, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Blazing Saddles, Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Animal House were voted Numbers Six through 10, respectively. Other more contemporary films on the Funniest Screenplay list include Shaun of the Dead, Superbad, Borat, Mean Girls and Anchorman.