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Katharine Heburn's charming turn as a Scottish "gypsy"
After the twin debacles in 1934 of the film "Spitfire," where she played a hellcat from the mountains of South Carolina, and the play "The Lake," which inspired the famous Dorothy Parker barb, "She ran the gamut of emotions from A to B," Katharine Hepburn returned to Hollywood (stopping off in Mexico to divorce her husband Ogden Ludlow) and signed with RKO to do six more films during the next two years. The first film in Hepburn's new contract with "The Little Minister," a Scottish romance written by James M. Barrie, which gave her the opportunity to do her Bryn Mawr accent with a pronounced burr.

Hepburn played Lady Babbie, the young ward of Lord Rintoul (Frank Conroy), who lives in the Scottish town of Thrums in 1840 and likes to masquerade as a gypsy girl. In this costume she makes the acquaintance of Gavin Dishart (John Beal), the humorless young minister who has arrived in town, and slowly but surely gets him involved in the town's labor problems involving the weavers of Auld Licht Kirk. Of course the "little minister" falls for the gypsy girl and she takes pains to mold him into the perfect man to be her master (she actually uses those words). Meanwhile, the townsfolk are aghast that their minister has been hanging out with the gypsy wench, and are prepared to fire him form his post.

Hepburn's performance is more than adequate and reviews at the time compared it favorably with that given by Maude Adams, the premier Barrie interpreter, several decades earlier. Beal is no more match for Hepburn than his character is for Babbie, and it is rather hard to believe she is the man of his dreams. However, this film from director Richard Wallace has the advantage of an very strong collection of character actors, including Beryl Mercer as Margaret, Alan Hale as Rob Dow, Donald Crisp as Dr. McQueen ("Do not show me his ha-er"). The adaptation of the Barrie story (which was both a novel and a play) was by Sarah Y. Mason and Ictory Heerman, who had won an Oscar for Heburn's "Little Women," and Jane Murfin, who had a hand in the disastrous "Spitfire." The result is more of an emotional drama that the original tender comedy.

The verdict at the time was that these costumes dramas were what resulted in Hepburn being labeled "box office poison," but "The Little Minister" is a decent little film. Hepburn has some fun playing the gypsy side of Babbie and also gets to do one of her better crying scenes from early in her career at the film's pivotal moment. Along with "Little Women," this is the one other early Hepburn film that could be characterized as being charming.

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A disquieting vision of Scottish society
This film is a poignant vision of Scottish society in the 19th century. It is centered on a new young minister arriving in a village in Scotland. He has to face two things : the greed and inhumanity of the lords who exploit the workers and the residents in the village, to the point of getting the army to help them. He preaches peace but he is not listened to because a gypsy girl is agitating the population. His second ordeal is love. He falls in love with the gypsy girl who manipulates him to the point of making him ring the alarm when the soldiers are coming and of protecting her in various situations. This leads him to missing a prayer session, being dismissed, getting involved in a scuffle at the church and getting wounded in the process. But the girl is not a gypsy at all, or nearly not at all. She is the abandoned girl the local lord has saved and nearly adopted, at least raised as his daughter and he wants to marry her. But he is not in love and she is with the little minister. Love of course prevails and she changes her loyalties. This raises two questions in Scottish society. The power of the Elders in a church. They can dismiss the minister as they please and they do not take into account any circumstances that could explain some events. They are extremely authoritarian and strict and their only aim is to keep the peace in the village, even if it means abiding by the decisions of the powerful against the powerless. In other words, they defend an established institution and not Christian morality. The second question is that a local lord can marry a girl under his position, but a man cannot marry a girl over his position. The minister could not marry the girl if she were a real lady. He can only do that becasue she is an abandoned child raised by the local lord. Social stratification is extremely strict in this society too. Finally this film reveals a brilliant and young Kathryn Hepburn and that is definitely a good thing.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

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A WHIMSICAL CURIO.
This curiously little-know Hepburn film is a fine, respectable version of the play by Sir James M. Barrie. In 184O, in the village of Thrums, Scotland - whose main industry is weaving - the local villagers anticipate the arrival of their new minister, Gavin Dishart (Joan Beal) with great enthusiasm. Soon after his arrival in Thrums, the little minister meets Babbie (Hepburn). Her proper name is Barbara: she is actually the well-educated fiancee of Lord Milford Rintoul, but she makes Dishart believe she is indeed a brazen, bewitched gypsy.....Contrary to what a previous reviewer noted, Hepburn was a full 26 years old when this was filmed - NOT a teen-ager! Barrie's original novel dates from 1891. Maude Adams played Babbie on the stage with great success. Margaret Sullavan badly wanted to play Hepburn's coveted role of Babbie. The film was not a financial success for RKO: it lost $1O,OOO at the box office.