Up until 'Test of Honor', John Barrymore basically played light-hearted comedies or adventures in his earliest motion picture roles. Titles like 'The Incorrigible Dukane', 'Man From Mexico', the well made 'Raffles the Amateur Cracksman' amongst others fill out Barrymore's first six years in motion pictures. Test of Honor is sadly a lost film meaning no prints or negatives are known to exist. But newspaper revues of the time, namely the New York Times, still exist to show that this film and Barrymore's performance was widely praised upon release. The synopsis of this film is quite similar to Barrymore's 1916 Broadway stage role in 'Justice' in which a man is tried in court and subjected to the rigors of the penal system. 'Justice' was a play by John Galsworthy yet it's story could've influenced parts of 'Test of Honor' which in itself was an original story. Perhaps Barrymore himself had a large part in the construct of many of the film's scenes as he would do in many of his later silents. John S Robertson is the director as he would also collaborate with Barrymore the following year on the famous Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde(1920).
*Noted as being the actor's first great dramatic motion picture success prior to playing Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde the following year.
