Unable to capture failure of rsh

Question

I have the below rsh code as a part of a script. This code runs in a loop within the main script. In case the rsh fails, I wish to capture the exit code in a log for which the below If part was created. But it does not seem to be working as it always returns 0 for $? even when the remote server refuses connections.

I cannot use ssh as it is not configured.

rsh ${machine} -l ${osusernm} nohup ${ScrDir}/${LoadJobNm}.scr ${osusernm} ${machine} ${SIDFile} ${logon_id} ${calling_machine} &
           if [ $? -ne 0 ]
                    then
                    echo "ERROR : Failed to execute ${LoadJobNm}.scr in ${machine} for file ${SIDFile}" >> ${LogDir}/${JobNm}.log 
                    break
           fi