There are plenty of examples where menu display and help texts can be toggled.
For example, aptitude has `Aptitude::UI::Menubar-Autohide` and midnight commander has options in the layout menu to disable menu/buttons/etc. That way beginners get to learn through discovery, and may later choose to switch to calling the menu/action with a keypress. Both of those respond to "standard" F1 for help too.
Would I prefer emacs M-x and C-h style interaction in mc? Yeah, probably. I'm used to it everywhere else(such as zsh). However, as a long term user I can execute basically all the functions even though I've long since disabled the buttons, menus and hints.