Alethea Luce and The Young Rajah

On Friday May 6th at 10:45 a.m., Turner Classic  Movies will be showing another film with Crawfordsville ties. The 1922 silent film The Young Rajah is based on the 1895 play Amos Judd by Alethea Luce.

Alethea Luce was born in Crawfordsville in 1869 to David W. and Julia Wade Hartman. Luce's grandfather, Isaac F. Wade, was the city's first editor and edited the Crawfordsville Review.  After her mother's death, Alethea was adopted by her aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. A.P. Luse, and split her time between Crawfordsville and Chicago.  Luce is listed in many cast lists of productions in New York and London.  Although this is the only screenplay attributed to her name, Luce was a well-known female playwright of the stage.

Read more about The Young Rajah online at IMDb and TCM.

You can view photographs from the film at this blog.

If you want to see more Rudolph Valentino films, CDPL has The Sheik and The Son of the Sheik in our DVD collection!