THE YOUNG RAJAH (Famous Players-Lasky, USA, 1922)

Presented by: Jesse L. Lasky. D: Philip Rosen. adapt-sc: June Mathis, from novel Amos Judd by John Ames Mitchell (New York, 1895) and play, Amos Judd. a Play in a Prologue and Four Acts (1919) by Alethea Luce. ph: James C. Van Trees. cast: Rudolph Valentino, Wanda Hawley, Pat Moore, Charles Ogle, Fanny Midgley, Robert Ober, Jack Giddings, Edward Jobson, Josef Swickard, Bertram Grassby, J. Farrell MacDonald, George Periolat, George Field, Maude Wayne, William Boyd, Joseph Harrington (Dr. Fettiplace), Spottiswoode Aitken (Caleb). Original length 7795ft. Digital reconstruction by Flicker Alley from incomplete 16mm print and other materials, for Turner Classic Movies, 2006. 52 mins.

Plot Summary:

When the throne of Majarajah Sidir Singh of Dagmahar is overthrown, and the Majarajah himself is mortally wounded, his trusted military lead General Gadi runs to the aide of Sidir's only son, the Young Rajah. Through the efforts of General Gadi and Singh's closest friend Morton Judd, Judd makes arrangements to see the Young Rajah safely transported to the United States under the protection and care of his brother Joshua.

Joshua Judd raises the boy as his own, adopted under the new identity of Amos Judd. As the years roll on, Amos leads a life far removed from his cultural roots of India and largely unaware of his royal lineage. One day the usurper, Ali Kahn, is informed that the son of the Majarajah still lives. He supports his military leader to assemble trusted men to locate Amos and carry out his destruction, unless those devoted to the slain Majarajah are able to thwart the attack, and bring the Young Rajah home to restore peace to his oppressed citizens.

The interweaving of modern Americana with exotic Hindu culture touched with mystical inclinations was none too resistible to overlook in the eyes of scenario writer June Mathis, a trusted confidant to Valentino who contributed to his success in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalpyse, and urged him to take on the role, despite the apprehension expressed by Famous Players. The appeal was amplified when production and costume designer Natacha Rambova, wife to Rudolph, could extend her creativity in dressing her husband to suit the part. However once the picture reached completion and released to the public, Valentino retracted much of his initial enthusiasm and ultimately placed some of the responsibility of its luke warm reception in the lap of Famous Players, citing inadequate production facilities.

A digital reconstruction of what remains of this eighty-four year old picture was helmed by producer Flicker Alley in association with Turner Classic Movies. The Library of the Moving Image purchased what is believed to the be the only surviving fragments to this feature, that are non-sequential images totalling twenty six minutes in length, from an auction house who sold off the Leslie Flint Collection. Leslie Flint, once president of the Valentino Memorial Guild in London, and a staunch spiritualist claiming regular contact with Valentino, came into possession of a 16 mm print that was allegedly discovered in an Italian chicken coop in the 1960's. Too much time had passed before enough funding was acquired to transfer the complete film and this proved detrimental to its survival.

To provide a more fluid narrative to the remains of this picture, Flicker Alley implemented the use of two promotional trailers and production stills culled from both private collections and Paramount Special Collections at the Margaret Herrick Library. Continuity titles derived from original Paramount editing scripts help bridge the gaps in the plot alongside the original intertitles. Storyboards were also developed to see how these sequences would be laid out, and the restored intertitles and "still photo" sequences were worked on separately, then combined in an off-line edit.

The poor image quality has been enhanced considerably when the transfer of the 16 mm print was tackled by Advanced Digital Services of Hollywood, who devised a process of down-converting a 1080 x 1920 pixel HD image into four 540 x 960 pixel PAL quadrants. The four separate images were then "cleaned" by a digital filtering system and "stitched" back into an HD image which in turn down-converted into a final uncompressed NTSC Quicktime file to run at approximately 21 frames per second.

Now with new and existing intertitles, photographic stills in place of missing live action segments, and speed corrected, the reconstructive length reaches 52 minutes. Not nearly as long at the original running time of the feature, but enough to offer todayÕs audience a new opportunity to view a notoriously lost production.

Brandee Brannigan Cox