<P> Some Like It Hot opened to largely positive reviews and is today considered to be one of the greatest films of all time . It was voted as the top comedy film by the American Film Institute on their list on AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs poll in 2000 . In 2017, the film was voted the best comedy of all time in a poll of 253 film critics from 52 countries conducted by the BBC in 2017 . In 2005, the British Film Institute included this film on British Film Institute list of the 50 films you should see by the age of 14 . </P> <P> The film is also notable for featuring cross dressing, and for playing with the idea of homosexuality, which led to its being produced without approval from the Motion Picture Production Code . The code had been gradually weakening in its scope during the early 1950s, due to increasing social tolerance for previously taboo topics in film, but it was still officially enforced . The overwhelming success of Some Like It Hot is considered one of the final nails in the coffin for the Hays Code . </P> <P> It is February 1929 in the city of Chicago, during the era of prohibition . Joe (Tony Curtis) is an irresponsible jazz saxophone player, gambler and ladies' man; his friend Jerry (Jack Lemmon) is a sensible jazz double - bass player; both are working in a speakeasy (disguised as a funeral home) owned by mob gangster "Spats" Colombo (George Raft). When the joint is raided by the police after being tipped off by informant "Toothpick" Charlie (George E. Stone), Joe and Jerry flee--only to accidentally witness Spats and his henchmen exacting his revenge on "Toothpick" and his own gang (inspired by the real - life Saint Valentine's Day Massacre). Penniless and in a mad rush to get out of town, the two musicians take a job with Sweet Sue (Joan Shawlee) and her Society Syncopators, an all - female band headed to Miami . Disguised as women and renaming themselves Josephine and Daphne, they board a train with the band and their male manager, Bienstock . Before they board the train, Joe and Jerry notice Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe), the band's vocalist and ukulele player . </P> <P> Joe and Jerry become enamored of Sugar and compete for her affection while maintaining their disguises . Sugar confides to Joe that she has sworn off male saxophone players, who have stolen her heart in the past and left her with "the fuzzy end of the lollipop". She has set her sights on finding a sweet, bespectacled millionaire in Florida . During the forbidden drinking and partying on the train, Josephine and Daphne become intimate friends with Sugar, and have to struggle to remember that they are supposed to be girls and cannot make a pass at her . </P>

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