This filmization of John Jay Osborn Jr. 's novel Paper Chase ended up one of the surprise hits of the 1973-74 movie season. Timothy Bottoms stars as Hart, a brilliant but naive Minnesota-born first-year student at the Harvard Law School. Like most of his fellow aspiring attorneys, Hart is in fearful awe of his demanding, ego-deflating instructor, Professor Kingsfield ( John Houseman ). He is not so much intimidated by Kingsfield, however, as to resist falling in love with the professor's pretty daughter ( Lindsay Wagner ). An eminent theatrical and film producer, John Houseman won an Oscar for his first important film role (no, it wasn't his first film role ever; he'd played an unbilled cameo in 1964's Seven Days in May ), launching Houseman on a latter-day acting career wherein he spent most of his time playing variations of Kingsfield. Houseman also recreated the role for a Paper Chase TV series, which ran first on network television, then on cable. — Hal Erickson