The Reel Thrilling Events of Bank Robber Henry Starr: From Gentleman Bandit to Movie Star and Back Again

by Mark Archuleta

Overview

In 1921 headlines across the country announced the death of Henry Starr, a burgeoning silent film star who was killed while attempting to rob a bank in Harrison, Arkansas. Cynics who knew the real Starr were not surprised. Before becoming a matinee idol, Starr had been the greatest bank robber of the horseback bandit era.

Born in 1873, Cherokee outlaw Henry Starr had survived shootouts and death sentences and lived long enough to witness the invention of moving pictures. In 1919, after Starr was released from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, a hotshot movie producer convinced him he had the looks, charisma, and “wild and woolly” life story to become the next big movie star.

When filming began in 1920, powerful organizations aligned to censor Starr, attempting to prevent him from exposing Oklahoma’s corrupt legal system and the government’s mistreatment of the Cherokee. The Women's Christian Temperance Union pressured theater owners to ban his film, state and federal lawmakers drafted legislation to stymie theatrical distribution, and police and district attorneys threatened to send him back to prison.

Starr's only film, the biographical movie A Debtor to the Law, is lost to history, but through surviving memorabilia, newspaper accounts, and interviews with people who worked with him on set, author Mark Archuleta traces how the reformed gentleman bandit attempted to use the power of cinema to reframe his life story and redeem himself in the eyes of the public, his family, and the Cherokee Nation.

The Reel Thrilling Events of Bank Robber Henry Starr is about more than heists and Hollywood glamor. Starr’s journey is about the American myth of reinvention, recidivism, and the founding of the motion picture industry when racial tensions were simmering to a boil.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781574419788
Publisher:	University of North Texas Press
Publication date:	07/31/2025
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

MARK ARCHULETA is an Emmy-winning screenwriter, journalist, and performer. A fifth-generation Coloradoan of Spanish Basque descent, he grew up steeped in the history of the American West and the colorful characters who inhabited it. Archuleta loves exploring how historical fact is refracted through the prism of film and television. He lives in Green Valley, California.

Editorial Reviews

This is a well-written and engaging story about art imitating life and life imitating art in the later part of the silent period of American filmmaking. The story cuts back and forth between Starr’s ‘real’ and ‘reel’ lives. Archuleta’s book is highly readable and appropriate for a general audience, but it is also useful to specialists in the field of cinema history, US mass culture in the early twentieth century, and the depiction of Native Americans in popular culture. It is creative and thoroughly researched, citing extensive primary and secondary resources.”—Andrew Brodie Smith, author of Shooting Cowboys and Indians: Silent Western Films, American Culture, and the Birth of Hollywood
 
“Archuleta presents a different look at Starr’s abilities and performance while an actor. Starr’s criminal career is fully covered. The author presents Starr’s story quite well; his life unfolds smoothly and advances to the next step with ease.”—Mike Tower, author of The Outlaw Statesman: The Life and Times of Fred Tecumseh Waite

“A fascinating and well-researched account of a Western outlaw and moviemaker who lived on the border between myth and history.” —Richard Slotkin, author of A Great Disorder: National Myth and the Battle for America and Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860

“This captivating narrative illuminates the porous boundary between banditry and showbiz in the post-frontier period. Alternating between brazen bank heists and Hollywood stardom, Henry Starr gave moviegoers the authenticity they craved in an increasingly mediated culture. In bridging the divide between the Wild West and modernity, Starr and other gentleman bandits spawned an entertainment genre that has never lost its resonance. Thanks to Mark Archuleta for bringing us the reel thing.”—Michael J. Hightower, PhD, author of Banking in Oklahoma Before Statehood and Banking in Oklahoma, 1907–2000

“Archuleta’s biography of Henry Starr, one of the most prolific bank robbers in the nation’s history, will transport you to a time when the Wild West of myth and reality collided. This enigmatic Cherokee outlaw moved seamlessly from robbing banks to producing and starring in a biographical silent movie about his most colorful exploit. Starr’s life and death instantly became entwined in myth and legend. He had made the transition from the days when outlaws rode horses to a time when they arrived at banks in swift motorcars and wore tailored suits.”—Michael Wallis, author of Belle Starr: The Truth Behind the Wild West Legend
 

“The Reel Thrilling Events of Bank Robber Henry Starr is a fascinating book. It captures the America of a bygone age, one making the transition from an agrarian to an industrial society. Anyone interested in either the Old West or the movie industry will find it irresistible.”—Ricochet

From the Publisher