Cover -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. CHARLIE CHAPLIN: The Most Famous Man on Earth -- 2 BUSTER KEATON: The Camera Man -- 3. HAROLD LLOYD: The Striver -- 4. LAUREL & HARDY: Straight Man and Little Boy -- 5. THE MARX BROTHERS: Brothers of Anarchy -- 6. W. C. FIELDS: The Juggler -- 7. MAE WEST: "It's All Been Done Before, but Not the Way I Do It" -- 8. ERNST LUBITSCH: The Touch -- 9. PRESTON STURGES: The Cockeyed Caravan -- 10. CARY GRANT: The Picture of Archie Leach -- 11. KATHARINE HEPBURN: Spencer's Rib -- 12. BILLY WILDER: "Nobody's Perfect!" -- 13. MARILYN MONROE: Funny Blonde -- 14. DORIS DAY: Battle of the Sexless -- 15. JERRY LEWIS: They're Crazy About Him in France -- 16. PETER SELLERS: The Man Behind the Masks -- 17. DUSTIN HOFFMAN: Stardom, Revised -- 18. ROBERT ALTMAN: Overlapping Dialogue -- 19. MEL BROOKS: The 2000-Year-Old Parodist -- 20. WOODY ALLEN: Hope and Bergman -- 21. RICHARD PRYOR: Rebel Without a Pause -- 22. ALBERT BROOKS: The Return of Sully Sullivan -- 23. STEVE MARTIN: The Jerk and the Genius -- 24. EDDIE MURPHY: Incredible Shrinking Comic -- 25. BILL MURRAY: Just the Usual Comic Inspiration- Frustration, Loss, and Death -- 26. THE COEN BROTHERS: Oddball America -- 27. CHRISTOPHER GUEST: The Baron of the Mockumentary -- 28. BEN STILLER: Good Jewish Boys -- 29. WILL FERRELL: "A Pretty Nice Little Saturday" -- 30. JUDD APATOW: Peter Pans and Frat Brothers -- SHORT ENTRIES -- Abbott & Costello -- Wes Anderson -- Jennifer Aniston -- Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle -- Jean Arthur -- Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers -- Lauren Bacall -- Anne Bancroft -- Drew Barrymore -- Noah Baumbach -- Ralph Bellamy -- John Belushi -- Humphrey Bogart -- Bugs Bunny -- Frank Capra -- Jim Carrey -- Chevy Chase -- Cheech & Chong (Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong) -- Maurice Chevalier.

Claudette Colbert -- Gary Cooper -- Bill Cosby -- Billy Crystal -- George Cukor -- Cameron Diaz -- Marlene Dietrich -- Stanley Donen -- Margaret Dumont -- Blake Edwards -- Nora Ephron -- Bobby & Peter Farrelly -- Tina Fey -- Whoopi Goldberg -- Elliott Gould -- Jean Harlow -- Howard Hawks -- Ben Hecht -- Amy Heckerling -- Audrey Hepburn -- Alfred Hitchcock -- Judy Holliday -- Bob Hope -- Edward Everett Horton -- John Hughes -- Jim Jarmusch -- Chuck Jones -- Garson Kanin & Ruth Gordon -- Charlie Kaufman -- Diane Keaton and Mia Farrow -- Stanley Kubrick -- Harry Langdon -- Spike Lee -- Mitchell Leisen -- Jack Lemmon & Walter Matthau -- Richard Linklater -- Carole Lombard -- Myrna Loy -- Shirley MacLaine -- Jayne Mansfield -- Dean Martin -- Elaine May -- Leo McCarey -- Joel McCrea -- Lorne Michaels -- Mike Myers -- Mike Nichols -- Jack Nicholson -- Alexander Payne -- Tyler Perry -- Pixar -- Harold Ramis -- Tony Randall -- Samson Raphaelson -- Carl Reiner -- Rob Reiner -- Hal Roach -- Julia Roberts -- Will Rogers -- Paul Rudd -- David O. Russell -- Rosalind Russell -- Winona Ryder -- Morrie Ryskind, Bert Kalmar & Harry Ruby, George S. Kaufman, and S. J. Perelman -- Adam Sandler -- Mack Sennett -- Neil Simon -- Kevin Smith -- Steven Soderbergh -- Barbara Stanwyck -- James Stewart -- Whit Stillman -- Meryl Streep -- Barbra Streisand -- Quentin Tarantino -- Frank Tashlin -- The Three Stooges -- Vince Vaughn -- John Waters -- Keenen Ivory Wayans -- John Wayne -- Gene Wilder -- Robin Williams -- Renée Zellweger -- Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker -- Top 100 American Comedies -- Bibliography -- Index.