The Little Minister

A mysterious & headstrong gypsy girl falls in love with THE LITTLE MINISTER called to pastor in a small Scots village. Soon her influence has him behaving in a most unclerical manner, with repercussions for the entire community.

Although sadly neglected & overlooked, this fine, sentimental film, based on a 1891 novel by Sir James M. Barrie, features excellent performances and superior production values. RKO lavished care & money to get the details just right; it is a fine example of how Hollywood films of the period could evocatively portray other times, other places.

Katharine Hepburn has one of her most fetching roles in the exuberant Babbie. Full of boundless energy & good humor, yet fiercely protective of those weaker & less fortunate than she, Hepburn turns in a beguiling, always entertaining, performance. While there is really no mystery as to the true identity of her character, this in no way hinders Hepburn from continually delighting her expectant audience.

In the title role, John Beal (born James Alexander Bliedung in 1909) had doubtless the best role of his career in this, his second, film. By underplaying his scenes, he holds his own with the vivacious Hepburn. Exhibiting real star quality, it is unfortunate that the good movie roles failed to materialize. Beal did quite a bit of work through the years on the stage and had a triumph in television's THE ADAMS CHRONICLES in 1976. John Beal died in 1997 at the age of 87.

A very fine supporting cast lends depth to the smaller roles: Andy Clyde as the lonely village policeman; Donald Crisp as the local doctor; Reginald Denny as a pompous army captain; Mary Gordon as an elderly indigent; Alan Hale as the community's repentant drunk; Lumsden Hare as a strict & powerful church deacon; Eily Malyon as a member of the aristocracy; Beryl Mercer as Beal's devout mother; and Dorothy Stickney as a fluttery maid.

Mention should be made of Max Steiner's lovely score, which incorporates old & familiar tunes.

A couple of historical notes: the Auld Licht (Scottish for 'Old Light') is mentioned many times in the film. This was the very conservative Church of Scotland, or Presbyterian Church in America, which had the allegiance of a majority of the Scots people. Barrie's original novel was of the Kailyard (Scottish for a small cabbage patch near a cottage) School of writing which had great favor in Scotland in the late 19th Century. This style featured highly idealized & sentimental representations of Scottish village life. Thrums in THE LITTLE MINISTER would certainly be a prime example.

Very rarely was Katharine Hepburn cast as the Scot she was by descent. Our most popular image of her was with that clipped Bryn Mawr accent, cool, elegant, and sophisticated. She only played two Scots in her life Queen Mary Stuart who if truth be told was more French than Scots and the gypsy waif in The Little Minister.

This was certainly an unusual project for Kate requiring her to adapt a Scottish burr to her speech. She also plays the mysterious gypsy girl who stirs the elders of that Presbyterian congregation more than they realize. She certainly stirs the new minister in town, John Beal who's come to live there with his mother Beryl Mercer.

In an odd way Kate's character of Babbe is like the ditzy heiress in Bringing Up Baby, wreaking havoc wherever she goes, but charming Cary Grant as she does John Beal here. If James M. Barrie had twisted the plot in a Somerset Maugham direction, Kate's Babbe could easily have been a Scottish Sadie Thompson. Turn that one over in your mind.

But she's a lot more than she seems as Beal and the rest eventually find out. Beal does well as the earnest young man in his first parish, trying hard to do the right thing, but hormones just seem to be getting in the way. They'll do that. Good thing Kate was not a Sadie Thompson character.

The Little Minister is based on a novel by James M. Barrie about an unfamiliar time for Americans. I'm sure the film did well in the British Isles for RKO where they would have been more familiar with the history and mores of the time. Still it's an unusual part for Katharine Hepburn, her devoted fans would be the first to agree.

This was the last film version made of this delightful story based on James Matthew Barrie's first major successful novel and play, and it is long overdue for a modern remake, done with similar charm, beauty, and simplicity, please.

Here we find a timeless tale of a fresh-faced, youthful pastor boy, direct out of seminary, who loves his mother and has affection for his congregation, but who finds himself flaunting convention by falling in love against his will with a wild, beautiful gypsy girl. You could no more imagine this girl sitting quietly in a church praying than you could imagine Ted Kennedy becoming a Republican.

Gavin the minister, though he is "little" in physical size, is not small in courage or intellectual honesty. He knows he is falling in love with this girl, but can't seem to help himself. He fights his feelings, but still he is attracted, like a moth to a flame. She tricks him and teases him in their first encounters, yet he still comes back for more. There's just something different about this Babbie that he cannot resist (and one senses the gypsy girl feels the same way about Gavin). We see their relationship growing, the congregation begins to suspect something is distracting their beloved new minister from his duties, and an inevitable confrontation is in the works.

I won't give away any more, but go rent the video sometime or catch it on AMC or TCM, especially if you wish to see Katherine Hepburn in one of her most poignant, humorous and delightful performances (she even sings, too!). Kudos also to the late John Beal, who was perfectly cast as Gavin Dishart, the little minister. And an A-plus goes to Max Steiner for his lovely background musical score. Also, read the book by JMB when you get a chance; one can't put it down.

It's 1840 Thrums, Scotland. Gavin Dishart arrives with his mother to be the new Minister in the rural town. The town is impressed with his righteous talk. Babbie (Katharine Hepburn) is a cunning irreverent gypsy and there is a town ban on the gypsies. She pranks them by inciting a revolt against imaginary troops and then the real soldiers arrive. At every turn, Babbie is able to trick Gavin until finally, he is able to proclaim his love for the gypsy.

It's silly that Hepburn is playing a gypsy and she is dressed like the most stereotypical gypsy. It is saved by her shear playfulness and the eventual explanation of the truth. Initially, she's the cat and Gavin is little more than her play thing. That's kinda fun. She broadly play acts and he falls for it every time. It turns into a romantic melodrama and she makes it work.

Its tender sentimentality is out of fashion today, of course, and has been for decades. But that's the point -- and that, for me, is the beauty of this film: it's positively luminous with an innocence and understated nobility that put our postmodern "edginess" to shame. I have to wonder if we've lost the capacity to experience and appreciate such rarefied sweetness of feeling. A sadly neglected film, with one of Katharine Hepburn's incomparable early performances -- radiant, charmingly quirky, and more emotionally expressive than a dozen Garbos. Sad, too, that co-star Robert Beal never crashed into the upper ranks of stardom; I saw tremendous potential in that performance.