The Whole Truth

I recently watched The Half-Naked Truth, a minor but enjoyable 1932 comedy from Gregory La Cava.  It stars Lee Tracy as a carnival barker trying to promote a hoochie dancer played by Lupe Velez.  His assistant is played by Eugene Pallette while Frank Morgan portrays a Broadway producer.

I watched it with the closed captioning on, and was almost as amused by the CC's attempts to reproduce the dialogue as the movie itself.  Either the typist wasn't aware of some of the slang of the time, or didn't get the jokes, because there were an awful lot of mistakes.

For instance, when the sheriff is about to shut down the carnival, Pallette rushes in saying "amscray," but the CC has it as "hamstring." Later Tracy and Pallette talk in Pig Latin while the CC says "they speak in a foreign language." I guess it's a foreign language of sorts. (Lupe Velez also speaks in another tongue which is referred to as a foreign language--couldn't they tell it was Spanish?)

Later, Tracy convinces others that Pallette is his Turkish assistant who happens to be a eunuch. (Racy stuff in 1932).  Later, the maid jokes about this special kind of Turk, though the CC has her call him a "turkey." The maid later mentions her name is Ella Beebee, though for some reason the CC has it as "Albeibi"--so they add in the Turkish stuff when it shouldn't be there.

There are quite a few more mistakes.  Morgan refers to a fellow producer as a "sawed-off shrimp." The typist must have never heard of this phrase, since it comes out as "sore old shrimp." A reporter mentions Coney Island which somehow comes out as "Tony Island." Tracy refers to one of his clients as a protégé, which comes out "prodigy." And he calls Pallette a "roustabout" which so confuses the CC typist that there isn't even a word--the sentence was left out.