The main trouble with this movie is that none of its characters are all that likable. Lee Tracy as the carnival barker turned into a publicity man has a voice and brashness that quickly get annoying. The talent he's promoting, a young 'exotic' singer played by Lupe Velez, wears the requisite skimpy pre-Code outfits, but her musical and dance performances fall flat. Frank Morgan plays a Broadway show owner whose romances lack any semblance of reality or passion. There is simply no charm in this script, and Velez is the only actor cast who has the capability of breathing some into it, but she's almost entirely bottled up, which is a shame. There are some cute moments, such as when Tracy gets a compromising photo of Morgan and Lupez kissing, and blows up all sorts of copies to torment Morgan in his office. However, there are many other moments which are lame and anything but erotic, such as the whole nudist colony thing. The film seems to have been in search of something spicy, but you can't get that by giving it an ill-fitting and salacious title, including the most boring nudists possible, or by putting people together who have zero chemistry. Velez is the main reason to watch it, but you could also do much better.

Delicious Hispanic comedienne Lupe Velez's iconic Mexican SPITFIRE series was seven years in the future when she made this movie in 1932, THE HALF NAKED TRUTH. A star since the late 1920's, Lupe was one of the most gorgeous women in Hollywood and had a great career despite the limited casting opportunities that came her way (unlike her contemporary Dolores Del Rio, she would never play anything but a Latina). I'm a big admirer of Lupe's and really looked forward to this film especially with one of the great comedy directors of the era, Gregory La Cava, at the helm and cohorts as talented as Lee Tracy, Eugene Palette, and Franklin Pangborn. The movie is all about hyping a modest talent (Velez's cooch dancer) into major stardom thanks to brash, shameless publicist Lee Tracy. I found this rather ironic because it's seems this movie itself is a classic example of hype, it gets raves in many corners in my opinion simply because the great La Cava is in charge, however the results are quite disappointing. Several of the situations are great but never live up to their potential, notably the early carnival segment.Lupe is one of the stars of a flea-bitten small time carnival show that plays small towns to indifferent audiences, Tracy and Palette have behind the scenes jobs at the carnival. When the carnival's publicist quits because of the late paychecks, Tracy sees it as his opportunity to step into the job and become a big shot. Acting as the carnival barker, he announces Lupe is traumatized by this visit to their locale as she has just learned a local man is her father, the results of a 20-year-old indiscretion involving her mother, then a carnival girl like she is today. Tracy proclaims Lupe will reveal the name of the man who fathered her at tonight's performance, which perks up the previously disinterested locals who come a packin' into the show later that night. Alas, it all falls apart (regrettably as it would have been fun to see it pulled off) and in the resulting big brawl, Tracy hauls tail out of town with Eugene and Lupe as they steal a car and head for New York and the big time where Tracy successfully passes off Velez as an eccentric princess with a pet lion and desire for a show business career, a stunt which quickly lands her a slot in a major Broadway revue.Despite her top billing Lupe's part is regrettably secondary not only to Tracy but also Eugene Palette in perhaps the largest role this great character actor ever played in a talkie. Tracy's con man will remind many of his similar part in the next year's BOMBSHELL (a vastly superior film) opposite Jean Harlow, unfortunately his character is even less likable here and when he maliciously sabotages Velez's stardom when she takes up with producer Frank Morgan he just seems mean. Palette, on the other hand, is hilarious at every moment and there's a funny quite racy running gag of something mysteriously written about him by Tracy on the hotel's guest book, perhaps so that he can share a room with La Velez, probably that he's a eunuch but possibly that he's gay or somehow less than a man. Tracy also gets a racy gem of a parting line in his last scene with Frank Morgan but this script honestly needed another rewrite, there aren't that many laughs although many scenes seem prime for them. A low point is the occasionally unimpressive production design, the ritzy New York hotel the gang is staying at is rather sparsely furnished and worse there's a shot of an airplane flying that is blatantly a toy; couldn't they have found some stock footage of a real plane? THE HALF NAKED TRUTH is a fairly decent time filler and enjoyable even if you've undoubtedly seen it all before. And that fact that the luscious Ms. Velez wears the skimpiest outfits she ever wrote in a movie will surely be enough of a reason to check this out.

Lee Tracy and Lupe Velez are outstanding as press agent and circus dancer in this wild comedy of ambitious impostors. Tracy is a supremely fast talker….but Velez is probably right when she exclaims repeatedly that he's "Nothing but a four flusher!" A fun supporting cast includes Frank Morgan as big shot Broadway producer Merle Farrell, complete with long cigarette holder that he can't quite handle…and the great Eugene Palette as a circus escape artist who tags along with Tracy to the big city as a sort of assistant schemer.The plot may be somewhat uneven but this picture certainly has its moments. One sensational highlight is Lupe's song-and-dance on Broadway, in which she starts out stumblingly but changes her tune and wins over everyone, including the initially-shocked highbrow producer Morgan.Eugene Palette's scene staging a publicity stunt in a nudist colony is also hilarious. He shushes a companion complaining about the dress code: "You're lucky it ain't winter."Energetic performances and some spicy dialog produce plenty of laughs; Tracy and Velez pull off the rapid-fire love-hate bit superbly. If it's a bit inconsistent, this picture is nevertheless full of goofy surprises that keep us watching. Very entertaining.

This wonderfully ribald pre-code comedy is slightly schizophrenic in style. The first half is a breakneck-paced, rollicking sequence of frantic melees and stinging one-liners, not unlike Lee Tracy's other triumphs of the time, The Front Page and Blessed Event. Once the cast settles in on Broadway, the pace slows and the humour is more characteristic of director LaCava -- absurd situational comedy set up with deliberate pace and milked for effect. Although quite funny in its own right, this section seems to drag in comparison with the opening reels -- it may have worked better in a packed cinema than on the tube. In any case, this is a must-see for fans of pre-code antics -- there's no way it could have been made three years later. Tracy is terrific in his patented role as a fast-talking con artist, and Lupe Velez is a more lurid version of her Mexican Spitfire -- her minimal costumes rival those of a Busby Berkeley chorus girl. Frank Morgan is perfect as a libidinous Ziegfeld type, Franklin Pangborn is everyone's favourite fastidious concierge, and Eugene Pallette is victim to a hilarious running gag about his gender which alone is worth the price of admission -- he also has a unique method for tutoring fledgling Ophelias. There's an intriguing look at the 30s' conception of nudism, to boot.