"Why, baby, with publicity, you can sell electric fans to Eskimos, snowplows in Hawaii!" So declares Lee Tracy in The Half Naked Truth (1932), as a nervy press agent who turns a carnival hooch dancer (Lupe Velez) into a "Turkish princess" and Broadway sensation.

This fast-moving, often hilarious pre-Code comedy is the earliest of three Lee Tracy films recently issued on DVD by Warner Archive. (See separate reviews of Turn Back the Clock [1933] and The Nuisance [1933]). It's also one of Tracy's all-time best roles. The script calls for his character to make things happen by sheer impudence and audacity -- to make things up to the press in order to generate publicity and transform his fortunes. And Tracy, with a screen persona as a fast-talking, fast-thinking, impulsive firebrand, makes us believe he can do it.

At the beginning of the picture, Tracy is working in the carnival racket. When one of his fake acts gets exposed, he hightails it out of there with dancer Lupe Velez and his assistant Eugene Pallette, telling them, "Next stop, Broadway!"

Cut to Broadway, where Tracy instantly declares Velez to be a Turkish princess, building interest from reporters and scoring a fancy hotel room from hotel manager Franklin Pangborn. When Pangborn asks about Pallette, Tracy explains that he is the princess's eunuch! ("Every Turkish harem has one. They're very expensive.") Even for a pre-Code movie, it's amazing that this racy, running gag somehow stayed in the film. Eventually, Tracy latches on to Broadway producer Frank Morgan (superb), and cleverly gets Morgan to want to sign the "princess." And when Morgan and Velez start a romance and turn Tracy away, he is so infuriated that he plucks Morgan's secretary and turns her into a star -- by fabricating a nudist colony and leaking to the press that she hangs out there. To ensure front-page coverage, Tracy arranges for a carful of nudists -- including the secretary and Eugene Pallette (!) -- to be arrested in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue, in a sequence shot on location.

These are just a few of the outrageous publicity gimmicks that Tracy's press agent comes up with here. Through it all, The Half Naked Truth holds up well because its satire of the publicity business -- where it's easy to become famous for nothing, and to be famous for being famous -- is still so very relevant today.

It's also just plain funny, whether it's showing Pallette "rehearsing" love scenes with the attractive secretary, over and over, or -- in a spectacular centerpiece -- showing Lupe Velez bringing the Broadway house down with an amazingly energetic, infectious dance sequence that director Gregory La Cava smartly allows to last a good long while.

La Cava was an important veteran director of silent films and talkie screwball comedies who would soon direct She Married Her Boss (1935), My Man Godfrey (1936) and Stage Door (1937). While The Half Naked Truth runs a little bit out of steam as it winds down, it is perhaps La Cava's most significant earlier sound effort and is well worth catching. It's also worthwhile for Lee Tracy, a truly under-remembered star who deserves to be better known. Warner Archive's DVD is a typical no-frills affair, and has not been remastered, but still looks and sounds perfectly acceptable.

By Jeremy Arnold