Name: The Reel Thrilling Events of Bank Robber Henry Starr Presentation and Book-Signing
Start: 2025-10-04T11:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-10-04T12:00:00-05:00
Location: 320 Rogers Ave, Fort Smith, AR, United States, Arkansas 72901

The Reel Thrilling Events of Bank Robber Henry Starr Presentation and Book-Signing

During Fort Smith Fall Festival 2025, the Fort Smith Museum of History will host author Mark Archuleta for a program and book-signing as he debuts his book about Henry Starr, "The Reel Thrilling Events of Bank Robber Henry Starr"--the wild and woolly biography of a one-of-a-kind outlaw! Mr. Archuleta will present a program and Q&A about Henry Starr with a book-signing to follow.
Where: Fort Smith Museum of History
320 Rogers Avenue Fort Smith, AR
When: Saturday October 4
Time: 11:00 am
Cost: Free/Tickets: fortsmithmuseum.org
From Gentleman Bandit to Movie Star and Back Again
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 1872, 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.