Kenean Buel, Director

Slim Jim’s Last Chance
R: Kenean Buel. D: Carlyle Blackwell, Alice Joyce, George Melford, J.P. McGowan. P: Kalem Company. USA 1911
Print: EYE
No titles (!)

“The prison doors open and Tom Benton, a first timer, and Slim Jim, alias Red Davis, of the underworld, are liberated. Tom learns that the prison odor clings by being ceremoniously turned away wherever he applies for work. Slim Jim immediately on his release beats his way west. Eventually Tom goes west and finds his work. Several months later Slim Jim gets a job at the same place Tom is employed. Slim Jim, being caught at his old tricks and exposed by Tom, reveals Tom’s past. The several thrilling scenes that follow show Tom’s genuine manhood and gives Slim Jim an opportunity to prove that even the underdog has at least a spark of good lying dormant under the rough exterior.”
Moving Picture World synopsis

The Chest of Fortune
R: Kenean Buel. D: Jere Austin, John Mackin, George Hollister Jr., James B. Ross, Helen Lindroth, Henry Hallam. P: Kalem Company. USA 1914
Print: EYE
Dutch titles

>>> Summary

“John Hunt Morgan (1825-1864), although a commissioned Confederate general, acted independently of the high command and became famous for his raids during the Civil War. Operating chiefly behind Union lines, he and his raiders captured a Northern garrison in Huntsville, Alabama, in 1862 and was promoted to brigadier general. He was captured by the Union on one of his forays later that year but managed to escape. Transferred to a different command, he was killed in action in Greenville, Tennessee. His daring exploits into enemy territory made exciting screen materials. The Chest of Fortune, released 1914 by Kalem, was the first to appear. It potrayed Morgan and his raiders as cold-blooded murderers who butcher a Northern officer and his family. Other action melodramas included Morgan’s Raiders (1918) and The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come (1920).
Larry Langman, David Ebner: Hollywood’s Image of the South: A Century of Southern Films. Greenwood Publishing Group 2001, p. 218

Kenean J. Buel (c.1873 –1948) was born in Kentucky, Buel became involved in theater and eventually made his way to New York City where he was hired by the Kalem Company in 1908 as a film director under the tutelage of Sidney Olcott. Buel was part of the pioneering Kalem team that filmed in Florida in the winter months and in the fall of 1910, the rapidly growing Kalem organization sent him to head up a filming unit in California. After directing more than 50 films for Kalem, including a number starring Alice Joyce, Buel signed on with Fox Film Corporation in 1915 for whom he made another seventeen films. In 1919 he directed films for an independent company and made his last film in 1920. Kenean Buel died in New York City in 1948.
Revolvy

556-Buel