The Half Naked Truth (1932)

The Half Naked Truth (US 1932 - 76min.) Directed by Gregory La Cava,  written by Corey Ford and La Cava (& the uncredited Bartlett Cormack)


Comedy starring Lee Tracy and Lupe Velez. A fast-talking carnival barker attempts to turn a fiery hooch dancer into a Broadway star.

This pre-Hays Code comedy has a lot of fun poking fun at the showbiz. world of the early thirties, it's ways, traditions and idiocy.
It's also, in many ways,  a working blueprint for the screwball comedy films that would soon become big box-office with big stars and big name directors.

Lee Tracy stars as the carny who parlays himself into the position of a Broadway showbiz agent and publicist. Although his name recognition these days is near zero he was a very talented and skilled actor who created a career for himself as a  fast-talking, wisecracking, scruple-free unconventional leading man.
He brings all of that skill to this role, appears in every scene and carries the weight of the extremely wordy script with seeming ease.

His co-star is Lupe Velez (the Mexican Spitfire according to the studio's idiotic publicity) who is now remembered as the wife of Johnny Weissmuller and for her spectacular self-destruction and suicide as described in detail in Kenneth Anger's book Hollywood Babylon.

Which is a shame because, as she demonstrates here, she was a spirited and energetic comedy musical performer who gives her all to the song and dance numbers and manages to (just about) keep up with Tracy in the dialogue-heavy exchanges between the two.

There's other stuff of interest for the 21st Century viewer here : there's an extended opening act set in an authentic looking 1930's travelling carnival, which is fascinating in detail and in it's depiction of a long lost world of sawdust and sideshows. When the action shifts to New York there's some terrific location footage of the city - packed with people, motor cars and advertising hoardings - again a record of a time and place that's now lost to us.

Director Gregory La Cava demonstrates his skill with the camera that he would later bring to the classic farce My Man Godfrey (1936)  and the Katherine Hepburn/Ginger Rogers backstage comedy  Stage Door (1937). There's very little of the wide-shot, theatre style framing that so many films of the era suffer from : La Cava's happy to mix in close-ups, two-shots and clever angles to tell the story.
There's a superbly shot in the opening scene of a high board diver at the carnival that many of todays directors (with lightweight cameras & auto-focus) would struggle to replicate or better.

The supporting cast includes the human bullfrog Eugene Pallette as Tracy's best friend and Frank Morgan as the Broadway producer of limited imagination who is obsessed with setting 'moods' and has no idea of material. There's also a  noteworthy performance by the superb Franklin Pangborn as a prissy, oily hotel manager.

It's a funny, well made and strongly acted film with a smart script and some great performances; it's also a big hint at the direction that studio comedies might have taken had the moral clampdown and fear of change hadn't forced them into the constraints of the code.
Worth investigating.