The Half-Naked Truth

Flim-flamming carny barker Jimmy Bates (Lee Tracy) vows to turn a hooch dancer into a Broadway sensation. Since the hooch dancer is played by incendiary Lupe Velez, the screen’s Mexican Spitfire, it’s a good bet she’s going to see her name in lights! To start, Jimmy passes off his protégé as a Turkish princess and goes straight to the Imperial Suite at a posh Manhattan hotel. Now all he needs to generate a blitz of ballyhoo is a lion and 30 pounds of raw meat ordered from room service—and in a New York minute, the hooch dancer is a headliner. Gregory La Cava’s (My Man Godfrey) direction and razor-sharp comic support from Frank Morgan, Eugene Pallette and Franklin Pangborn add even more sparkle to this effervescent Depression-era spirit-lifter. The Half Naked Truth delivers “delightful comedy…plenty of laughs, and wonderful performance by Morgan as neurotic Ziegfeld-ish producer” (Leonard Maltin’s Classic Movie Guide).