TWILIGHT OF HONOUR (1963)

STARS: Richard Chamberlain, Claude Rains, Joey Heatherton, Nick Adams, Joan Blackman, James Gregory.

DIRECTOR: Boris Sagal. DURATION: 115mins.

SYNOPSIS: A sincere, young and largely inexperienced lawyer takes a case nobody but his ailing mentor believes he can win - that of a man accused of murder in a crime with political undertones.

RC PLAYS: David Mitchell.

At last: First billing in a movie designed to cash in on his ever-growing fame as Dr. Kildare and was shot during the hit series' end-of-season hiatus.

The movie itself is nothing more than a re-hash of Kildare. Here he plays a whiter-than-white lawyer (rather than a white-than-white medic), with veteran Claude Rains (in one of his last screen roles) as a father-figure fellow legal eagle in the mould of Blair General's Dr. Gillespie. And to top it all off, the TV drama's director Boris Sagal also provided behind-the-camera duties here.

However, there was one main difference: Richard's character here was supposed to be in his 30s - a few years older than James Kildare (the actor himself was still only 28 at the time of the film's release), prompting the make-up department to darken his hair in a bid to mature the boyish looks which had served him so well on television.

At the time, Chamberlain found the movie a welcome break from playing Kildare, who he felt has something of a stranglehold on his career: "I received a letter after Twilight of Honour," he said back in '63, "from a woman who complained about me being in a picture that she couldn't take her daughter to see. See what I mean? I'm typed."

Despite his TV fame, Richard was still somewhat wet behind the ears when it came to movie work. MGM were once again behind this venture and asked him to bring four suits along for his character to wear: A customary practice at the time. Unfortunately, Chamberlain didn't have any, explaining "I have a tuxedo, three pairs of slacks and two sports jackets - that's all." So the studio bailed out their wardrobe-deficient star with $400 worth of clothes which they allowed him to keep after shooting.

Chamberlain was also a little star-struck by his fellow cast members and turned down the opportunity to have his luxurious Dr Kildare dressing room transported across the MGM lot because, "I just wouldn't have felt right about using it while such a great actor as Claude Rains had only the regular studio type. I'm just a novice by comparison; I would not want them to think I kid myself otherwise."

Despite being a decent enough film with some good performances all-round, Twilight of Honour gained only moderate box office success - no doubt boosted though by Richard's army of adoring female fans only too happy to swoon at their hero on the big screen, no matter the production's quality. However, it garnered rather poor reviews; only Nick Adams made any kind of impression and received an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actor.

But what of Chamberlain? Well, it wasn't the great start to the movie career he desired. One critic even stated, "Richard Chamberlain would be wise, at this point anyway, to stick to his stethoscope. You'd swear he was actually afraid of the role." Could that response have been down to being typecast as Kildare? Perhaps. But it's more likely that simply on-set nerves had got the better of him.

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