The Great Dictator [he] was terrified, not knowing what to expect next." The Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, in Beverly Hills, California, has a copy of "The Great Dictator" script. The library permits viewers of the script to read it and take notes, but prohibits photocopying of it. In 1997, "The Great Dictator" was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant". In 2000, the American Film Institute ranked the film No. 37 in its "100 Years... 100 Laughs" list. The film
Dictator novel in 1845." In the 1970s, many dictator novels focused on the figure “of the aging dictator, prey to the boredom of a limitless power he is on the verge of losing.” Miguel Ángel Asturias's "El Señor Presidente" (written in 1933, but not published until 1946) is, in the opinion of critic Gerald Martin, "the first real dictator novel". Other literary treatments of the dictator figure followed, such as Jorge Zalamea's "El Gran Burundún Burundá ha muerto", but the genre did not gain impetus until it was reinvented in the political climate of the cold war, through the Latin American Boom.