You are now listening to the Someone's Favorite Productions podcast network.

Welcome back to Tumbleweeds and TV Cowboys, a classic Western film and TV podcast.

My name is Hunter.

This week, actor and screenwriter Mark Archiletta joins me to talk about his new book, The Real Thrilling Events of Bank Robert Henry Starr.

Henry Starr was an outlaw who rob banks and spent a lot of time in prison.

But like some other outlaws that will come up in this conversation, he became an entertainer and he played himself in a movie called A Debtor to the Law.

It's a fascinating story and while this is pretty different from what I normally cover, we do talk a lot about early cinema and real Old West outlaws, so I think there will be a lot for listeners to enjoy.

Here's our conversation.

Night Line King linked various Old West bank rubber Henry Starr released from prison, The half breed Cherokee robbed more banks than any man in America.

Teddy Roosevelt himself saved Star from the Hangman's noos.

Now a reformed Henry Starr to join forces with his old arch nemesis Marshall William Buffington to tell his story of daring do in Moving Pictures Star Quick.

I've given up robbing banks to pursue an even more despicable career.

I'm going into shoe business.

Mark.

Thanks so much for coming on the show.

How's it going, Uh, oh, it's terrific.

I'm I'm in Reno right now.

I'm at the Western wild West Historical Association roundup and I've got a book signing tomorrow.

So things are going great.

Oh that's awesome.

Yeah.

Well we are actually talking to day after your book has just been released.

So can you tell listeners about yourself and your history with Westerns.

Yeah?

Sure.

So I was born in the West.

I'm a Colorado native, actually a fifth generation.

My dad was a FAA employee.

He was an AUROW traffic controller and so he was We're kind of like the equivalent of Army brats, So we moved around a lot.

I lived in Colorado and then Oklahoma twice, and we actually lived in Lima, Peru for a while.

Came back to Colorado.

I graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder with a degree in English literature.

I moved to Hollywood to be an actor and screenwriter.

Always have loved films, been obsessed with films and some of my favorite westerns, which casting The Sundance Kid, Little big Man, Missouri Brain Wild Bunch.

I just started rereading the original screenplays for those, and they just jump off the page.

I mean you can see them.

You don't even need to have seen the movie.

They're just so alive on the page.

Yeah.

I really need to see Butch Casside and The sun Dance Kid again because I remember I watched it with my grandfather when I was I don't know, maybe twelve or thirteen.

I haven't seen it since then, but at that age I wasn't a fan of it, and I remember my grandfather asked me what I thought, and when I said that I didn't like it, he told me I could leave.

You know what.

I gotta go with Gramps here on this one.

But no, that's awesome.

Now, Okay, So your book is about Henry Starr, and Henry Starr is someone that I was previously unfamiliar with, and I'm guessing there are listeners who haven't heard of him either.

So can you give us a general overview of who Henry Starr was and what about history inspired you to write a book about him?

Well?

Sure, So you know, as I mentioned, I was in Hollywood.

I had just finished a leading role in a film called Forgotten Heroes.

And I had always had this idea that I was going to be Sylvester Stallone, you know that writes a screenplay that's that's so good that they let him star in it.

That was my fantasy.

So I was always on the lookout for a project for myself.

And here I am about nineteen ninety.

I'm in Burbank in the Crown Books when Crown Books used to exist, and I'm looking in the Bargain Bent and there's this book called Thrilling Events Life of Henry Starr, written by himself, and on the covers of picture of Henry Starr, and I said, well, hey, he looks like me.

And so I crack opened the book and I discovered that he robbed more banks than any man in America.

He was part two a key.

He was sentenced to hang twice.

He was on death row.

President Teddy Roosevelt commutes his sentence.

He vows, you know, Roosevelt says to him, you know, I'll let you go if you promise to be to be good and he said, you know, of course, and he and he kept that promise for almost an entire year.

He goes back and forth at bank robbery.

He ends up robbing two banks at the same time, which was that that was the goal of every bank robber.

If you know Western history, Vans know the Dalton Gang, They all got wiped out in Coffeeville except for Emma Dalton.

So he was able to pull that off.

And then what was really amazing is he lived long enough.

You know, he started robbing banks on horseback.

He lived long enough to see the invention of the motion picture camera.

And then he became a movie star, recreating all his greatest crimes on film.

It's like, okay, that's a movie.

Yeah.

So I've been trying to get this movie made for many, many, many years, and you know, as you know, the screenplay is only one hundred and twenty pages, and I have all these stacks of research that I've done over the years, and I said, well, you know, until the movie gets made, somebody needs to tell this story.

So I set about writing the book, The real thrilling Events of Bank Robert Henry's Star.

Yeah, it's definitely it is a really awesome story.

I can see how somehow you would want to make it into a movie.

But let's go back.

So we're gonna kind of start this conversation off a little before his era and go into kind of cinema examples of outlaws becoming entertainers.

So can you kind of elaborate on that?

Oh?

Yeah, absolutely.

So you know what's great about this story is that you know there that the film industry was so new that real outlaws and lawmen became movie stars and producer directors.

Well, starhood arrived kind of in a lull between crime waves like Jesse James and John Dillinger, so you had, like, you know, the Cole Younger Gang.

And just to give you some contexts, Jesse James died when when Henry Star was about nine years old, so that's kind of the era.

He was still a kid when Jesse James was big.

So on September seventh and eighteen ninety eighteen seventy six, the James Younger Gang robbed the bank in Northfield, Minnesota.

If I'm sure that name rings a bell for Western film lovers, because there was the film in nineteen seventy two, which was the Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid that was directed by Philip Kaufman then and Cliff Robertson played Cole Younger.

And then there was also The Long Writers in nineteen eighty directed by Walter Hill, and that had David Carridine as Cole Younger.

Getting a little off track there with the films, but what happened was is that all the Youngers were captured and sent to prison and they were there for about fifteen years.

So in nineteen oh one, Cole and Jim Younger they were released from the Minnesota Territorial Prison at Stillwater and they were told that they could not capitalize on their fame in any way, and so they were given jobs as monument salesman, which is another way of saying selling tombstones, which you know, you want to think, hey, that's cud.

That's a perfect job for somebody who put people under tombstones a lot, right, But what was available to them if they could keep it quiet enough, was you could become a stage actor.

You know, you could give speeches, or you could do what Cole Younger did, and he teamed up with Frank James and they created the Great Cole Younger Frank James historical wild West show because film didn't exist then or wasn't really available, so they did a wild West tour jumping ahead to somebody like John Dillinger.

Right, So John Dillinger July twenty second, nineteen thirty four, he's Gonnen down outside the Biograph Theater.

He had just seen the movie Manhattan Melodrama, which was with Lark Gable paying a gangster.

Well, you couldn't imagine Dillinger playing himself on the on the silver screen.

The industry had evolved.

You had guys like Clark Gable who were handsome and did that sort of thing.

So so that's what's amazing is that you that Henry Starr arrived.

He was just in that period of time where the film industry was just brand new enough that outlaws could play themselves and Loman became producer directors.

Yeah, and you know, it makes a lot of sense to me for people who have achieved some level of fame or notoriety to go into something like show business, because it's it's sort of a continued pursuit of fame, and if you already have made a name for yourself, you might as well attempt to capitalize it on on on a way that is that doesn't require, you know, breaking the law.

And then so from here, I kind of let's put the outlaws on a backburner just for a little bit, because there's something you get into in your book that I think is really interesting, and it's how President Roosevelt used lawman in the film industry.

So can you talk about how, like, as you put it in your book, Roosevelt made a US marshal the first ten star filmmaker.

Yeah, so President Teddy Roosevelt is actually credited with creating the whole documentary genre.

And you know, as you know, he was like a naturalist and he loved, you know, being out in nature.

And in nineteen oh eight he wanted to explore Oklahoma, and so his guide was a US Marshall, John Abernathy.

And as the as they're you know, trekking around and hunting, Abernathy catches a wolf with his bare hands.

And President Roosevelt goes back into Washington, d c.

With his society pals and says, you won't believe this, this this marshall was able to catch a wolf with his bare hands.

And of course they all chuckled and thought that, you know, this was hyperbole and so so right, So Roosevelt calls up Arabnathy and says, you know, there's that new device, the moving picture thing.

I want you to get one of those, and I want you to film it and so I can show it to my friends and prove them that I'm not lying.

So, Abernathy, there was a man in the area in Chandler, his name was James Benny Kent, who had one of those motion picture cameras.

You kind of see that's a box.

It looks like a box with a crank on the side of it, uh huh.

So they tried to film Abernathy catching a wolf.

They weren't able to do it, so they had to kind of fake it.

But afterwards, Abernathy decides, you know, he's going to form his own film company.

Was built a bit by the movie bug.

So he forms the Natural mutisone Come, I'm sorry, Natural Muticene Company, and he makes a film called The Wolf Hunt kind of inspired by that, and that's in nineteen oh eight, so he became the first ten star filmmaker.

Yeah.

Now The Wolf Hunt is a pretty triumphant title like that, that is spectacular.

I was putting that in a poster would make me want to see that movie immediately.

But let's okay, So back to the outlaws.

There were a couple outlaws prior to Henry Starr who broke into the film industry, and you know, they were the first bandit movie stars, as you put it, and that's Al Jennings and Emmitt Dalton, and of course Immitt Dalton was a member of the Dalton Gang, who listeners are I would think would be familiar with.

You know, there's the movie When the Dalton's Road, which is a Randolph Scott movie from nineteen forty and that was actually based on a book by Emmitt Dalton.

And the Dalton Gang are characters in other westerns as well.

But how did Al Jennings and Immadalton find their way into the movies?

So Al Jennings is has been dubbed.

There's a crime historian writer named Jay Robert Nash, and he called Jennings the most inept outlaw of the Old West because he was kind of the wrong way Corrigan of bank robbers or train robbers.

There's a story where he rode his horse along a train and he pulled his gun and told the conductor to stop the train and the heat and the you know, the conductor just hit the gas, you know, zoomed away.

And so al Jennings then found a train that was stopped to getting water and so he you know, robbed that one because it was standing still.

But all he got was like fifteen dollars and a bunch of bananas, which is to say that he did not have a very distinguished our law career.

It only lasted four months and okay, yeah, and so he was sent to Ohio State Penitentiary.

But what what the thing about al Jennings was is he was just a racking tour like he just he could wow people with stories that were mostly made up.

And it turned out that he was in prison with O.

Henry right, the great short story writer.

Oh yes, and Henry Star was actually there at the same time, but oh Henry, and he tells O Henry the story and it, oh Henry publishes It's called Holding Up a Train, and so this is kind of years later.

But but what happens is that he kind of becomes famous and then his story, it's called Beating Back, was serialized in the Saturday Evening Post.

So all of a sudden he was known coast to coast, even though he wasn't even a good bank robber, right right.

So so then because he had the book and everybody knew it, he pitched the story to a production company out of New York called Tannhauser, and so in nineteen fourteen they made the movie Beating Back.

And then you know, of course, later Dan Durier plays Al Jennings in the film Al Jennings of Oklahoma.

Okay, yeah, that was made nineteen fifty one, but of course it was all who he I mean, it was all yeah, it was all made up.

And then you know, and Al Jennings actually had the longest career, like he eventually became a technical advisor on The Oklahoma Kid with James Cagney and Humphrey Bogert.

That was in nineteen thirty nine.

He didn't die till nineteen sixty one.

So you know, he had a really long career for a four month outlaw career.

So Emma Dalton is a kind of a different story.

It's interesting because you know, Emma Dalton obviously was part of the Dalton Gang and so he was way more legit bad guy.

But you know, when they pulled off the or failed to pull off the double bank robbery and Coffeeville.

You know, you've seen the famous photos of his brother Bob and Grat and then at Dick Power and Bill Power, Dick Broadwell, all laid out on boards dead.

I don't know if you've seen the pretty famous photo.

Oh, yes, it's it's in your book, right.

Yeah, yeah, I've actually used it, yeah, in the book.

And so he was the only one to survive.

But he was only nineteen years old, so his career ended at nineteen.

And then he went to Kansas State Penitentiary, right, so he gets out after fifteen years or so.

And again, you know, he had the same kind of options that the Cole Younger had, which was, you know, everybody said, oh, are you going to do a play?

Are you going to you know, he goes, oh, I'm not an actor.

I'm not going to do any of those things.

Well, it turned out that the man who photographed his brothers and the rest of the gang dead, a man by the name of John Tackett.

Tackett sold those photos and you know, became an international success.

But he was still living in Coffeeville.

So in nineteen oh eight he had kind of transformed into becoming one to be a filmmaker because movie cameras had become cheap, you know, everybody could kind of get them now.

So so John Tackett pitched Coffeeville and said, hey, how about we do a promotional film about the city and how much it's changed since the bank robbery in eighteen ninety two, and will include a little scene that recreates the bank heist.

Well, Emma Dalton got wind of it, and he'd been thinking about writing a book, so he contacted tack It and said, you know, I'll help you.

I'll I'll tell you how it all went in the facts.

So they make this little film promotional film, and nobody cares about any part of it except for the bank robbery part.

And they said, well, we got something going on here, and so attack it and Dalton joined forces and they in nineteen oh nine they make the movie The Great Dalton Rate.

Now.

Because Emmat Dalton didn't want to get in trouble with the you know, the parole board, he wasn't in it, but then after it became a hit, He's like, eh, I'm going to be in it.

And so he made another version called The Last Stand of the Dalton Boys in nineteen twelve, and then in nineteen eighteen he made Beyond the Law, which was really interesting because you know, he played himself eventually, but in this movie he not only played himself, but he also played his brother Frank and Bob.

Oh wow, okay, I really want to see how they pulled that off.

Yeah, like, hey, he looks chip boy.

Those brothers sure looked alike.

Yeah, they did it right.

And then of course, you know he wrote When the Dalton's Road and you mentioned the Randolph Scott picture.

But what was interesting is that over the years, you know, the lies got bigger, right, Like the first movies were like, oh, we were bad, we shouldn't have done it, and then later it's like we were wronged and you know, we deserve to do this.

But Emma Dalton had a pretty long career too.

You know, he lived until nineteen thirty seven.

He moved to Hollywood, formed his own production companies, invested in Land.

He was really smart.

He was a very cage promoter and he would go and as an advanced man for all his films.

Uh he sold them in Europe.

Uh.

He was.

He was quite successful.

Al Jennings was very successful as well.

He sold his films in Europe.

He eventually moved to Hollywood and had his own production arm and was was cranking out films all the time.

So, you know, in comparison to Henry Star, those other two were which were much more successful.

Yeah, that's amazing that to go from you know, outlaw to being you know, you know, pretty you know, you're very successful in Hollywood is a pretty pretty cool story.

All right.

So now from here we're really getting into the main subject of your book.

We're talking about Henry Starr.

So can you tell us about his early days is in outlaw and what his reputation amongst other outlaws in lawman was like.

Henry Starr was part Cherokees.

I mentioned his father was half Cherokee, his mother was quarter cheroch Key.

He had an uncle, Tom Starr that was had a really bad reputation.

Supposedly he'd cut off the years of thirty men and wore them as a necklace.

His cousin married Belle Shirley and she became Bell Star, which everybody, yes, right, everybody knows her, and there been lots of movies made about Bell Star, but he wasn't actually related to her.

She was just married to his cousin.

Okay, but so so the stars kind of had this bad reputation.

But he wasn't like that, and his father wasn't like that.

He was he was a good kid.

But unfortunately his father died when he was still in elementary school and he had to quit school to work the farm in the in the timber business.

Well, unfortunately, that left him very vulnerable to a corrupt deputy marshal system.

I don't know if you're familiar with this, but deputy marshals in the Indian Territory, in Oklahoma Territory, they didn't get paid.

They worked per diem right, or they got paid for delivering warrants or you know, transferring prisoners and things like that.

So they were incentivized to make arrests.

And as a boy, Henry Starr was twice falsely arrested set up.

He was set up for bringing a liquor into the Indian Territory and then he was brought up on false charges for a horse theft.

And they didn't have a juvenile prison jail system back in the day, so when he was hauled to Fort Smith Prison, he was thrown in with the general population and it was rough.

So they were horse thieves.

And so he was immediately attacked by a prison gang and he wasn't having anything to do with that.

He pulled up his fists and started, you know, throwing them around.

So, which is to say to you know what you were talking about what they thought of him.

He was a tough kid.

He didn't broke any nonsense.

And you know, he eventually hung out with really bad guys Cherokee Bill he was in prison with.

He was members of his gang were Bill Doolan, George Bittercreek Newcome.

Now these are guys both who were eventually killed by lawman.

But he was a kid.

He was only nineteen.

These were much older men.

So it's just an interesting aspect that he that he garnered so much respect as a teenager.

Grown very dark men would follow him like I think of it as the wild bunch, you know, and he would see them as a teenage kid.

You go, wow, that kid's got to be impressive.

And yet he was a gentleman bandit.

Yeah.

Now, one thing I wanted to bring up is now he was sentenced to hang I don't know if this is skipping ahead very much, but he was sentenced to hang by Isaac Parker.

Yeah, and Isaac Parker.

In a previous episode, myself and Zach Bryant talked about Hang Them High, and the Judge character is I believe loosely based on Parker.

So I just thought i'd mentioned that just to kind of tie Henry Star to a movie that has come up on the podcast and would and it is definitely one that people would be familiar with.

Yeah, Judge Parker was known as Hanging Judge Parker.

And justice was very swift in those days.

You were senced to hang and you would hang within thirty days.

And Henry Starr was on Murderer's Row.

He only killed one man in his entire career and he never killed anyone in the commission of a bank robbery.

But he was traveling alone in Oklahoma when he was surprised by a bounty hunter who said he had a warrant, and Henry Star said, well, show me your warrant, and the guy goes, well, I forgot my warrant and he says okay.

Well, Henry Star says, I'm gonna let you shoot first and if you miss, then I'm going to shoot second.

And the guy fired out him, missed, and Henry Star killed him.

So when he was Henry Star was eventually captured.

He was sent to Fort Smith Prison.

Hanging Judge Parker sentenced him to hang.

Henry Starr appealed it to the Supreme Court.

Supreme Court said Henry Starr had the right to himself and that hanging Judge Parker prejudiced the jury.

They were a paid jury.

That's how it worked.

If you wanted to keep making money, then you gave Parker the verdict that he wanted.

So he had to get another trial.

Parker sentenced him to hang a second time.

Same problem.

Star appealed it to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court said, Nope, you can't.

You can't prejudice the jury.

He needs a third trial.

Well, by that time, Judge Parker had died and the new judge allowed Henry Star to plead guilty demandslaughter.

He was sent to the Ohio State Penitentiary and there he met O, Henry and Al Jennings.

They were all there together, all right.

So we're gonna maybe fast forward a little bit.

So this is to the point where Al Jennings and Immadalton are active and successful in movies and a man named PJ.

Clark, who was the president of the Pan American Motion Picture Corporation.

He thinks the same thing could happen with Henry Starr.

So what about Star in particular made Clark and other studios want to put the outlaw on the and on the big screen, And what made them so certain he could become a star?

Henry Star was very charismatic.

People who met him like he could charm anybody.

And I don't mean charm in a negative way, like he was being false.

He was supremely authentic.

Uh.

And he was as I mentioned that he had to leave school as a as a kid, but he was an autodidact.

He always he studied law.

He claimed that he had passed the bar, knew all the classics, new history.

So he was an intellectual.

And so every people really warmed up to him and liked him.

And in terms of the film industry, there had been you know, Westerns had grown a little stale by the time.

So he got out of prison in nineteen nineteen.

He was released from Oklahoma State Penitentiary, and you had a lot of kind of cliched Westerns at that point, and people were craving authenticity, and there was no one more authentic than Henry Starr because even like say Al Jennings, as I mentioned, he can make lots of Westerns, but that was fake.

He had a four month career.

He wasn't real.

And at Dalton he only had one story.

His career ended at the age of nineteen, and here he was forty six years old.

He just kept milking the same story over and over again.

Now here comes out of prison, the greatest bank robbery in brain robbery in history, and he comes out he's handsome, he's charming.

So you know, it was a perfect fit, all right.

And so of course we're talking about your early cinema, the Silent era, and so this is also the pre code era.

But there was an earlier attempt at censoring movies and I think this was specifically in Oklahoma, and it almost hints at what would come later when the Hayes Code went into effect and I think thirty four or thirty five.

But yeah, can you tell us about it, like who wanted the censorship and how it would affect Henry Starr's film.

Yeah, So censorship and anytime there's an art form, there's somebody who wants to censor it.

And definitely the Comstock Law which was passed in eighteen seventy three.

This was Anthony Kahn's Stock, who became the US Postal Director or whatever, and he wanted to control anything that was sent through the mail, and he the first thing he did was try to censor dime novels and he got them shut down.

Actually, and I didn't mention this, but Henry Starr was actually had his own series of dime novels.

Only Jesse James had his own series of dime novels, and he had that at nineteen.

So then what happened was the Women's Christian Temperance Union.

Once they passed prohibition, they needed a new target and film was the perfect target for making sure that the minds of children wouldn't be corrupted.

And so they were very vigilant and they would try to influence, you know, Oklahoma legislators, and they passed at some point or tried to pass the Beating Back Bill, which, if that sounds familiar, was the name of Al Jennings' book and film.

It was particularly directed at Al Jennings to shut it down.

And then they also, of course when Henry Starr got out of prison, they realized he was going to do the same thing.

Then they added Henry Starr to that bill, and so Henry Star is specifically named to say we are stopping films with him in it.

So the film industry at the time, you know, even a nationwide right, they didn't want some you know, government entity going creating a code that everything had to pass through before right before you know, the public could see it.

And the same thing for the theater owners in Oklahoma.

So the theater owners in Oklahoma said, you know what if we just stop these bills in federal and state, we agree that we will not show any films that show criminal behavior.

Okay, So Henry Starr and PJ.

Clark, the producers, now they've got a film on their hands that nobody's going to show.

Yeah, and so how this isn't this isn't Uh, this is something I kind of a question just came to my mind.

But like, how would not how would a film not being shown in a single state, Like how would that affect a movie?

At that time period.

You had a system called exchanges that were that were developing.

So originally, you know, you you had Nickelodeon's where you'd peer and you'd crank and the and there'd be little cards that you know, made motion.

And then you had projected films, and they began it's just like storefront.

Somebody sticks up a sheet and they've got a projector, and they put in seats and they would show whatever film.

You would buy a film, not based on the genre or any quality.

You bought it by the foot right, it didn't matter.

So these little theaters started collecting a bunch of film and they you know, and nobody wanted to see the films anymore, so you had to have a constantly rotating stock.

Somebody got the idea that they would handle the delivery of all these these films, and they so they formed exchanges to be able to transfer films from California and New York and get them to the sort of way I guess you'd call flyover states, except they wouldn't be called that then, so the system was still kind of evolving.

They started setting up exchanges in like Dallas, and then they started setting up up in Oklahoma.

So the film company, let's say, you know, Universal or whatever, would send their films to these exchanges and then they'd be distributed, right, so they were.

They were dependent upon these exchanges, the big theater owners.

What Henry Starr and PJ.

Clark had to do was appealed to the independent little theaters that were always forgotten by the exchanges.

The exchanges only wanted to send movies to big theaters and the you know what, we're becoming movie palaces with lots of seats, but there were lots of those small town theaters that were always forgotten.

So literally they had to take the film in a can and drive it from town to town to the little to the little theater owners.

Gotcha, okay, okay, so they so at this point, let's talk about them.

They go into production and you know, even though they would mint out miss out on presenting the film, you know where the state was in the state where it was shot.

So the production begins and one thing that's interesting is is when Henry Starr is being interviewed, the interviewer asks if he's going to ride on a diamond studded saddles like in an average Western and Starr says no, He's trying to stick to the truth and he's not an impersonator like Williams Hart.

And I know some listeners are aware of Williams Heart.

You know, he was a silent star.

And I don't know if this is his most well known movie, but he's in a movie called Hell's Hinges that I might actually be talking about on a podcast in the future.

But he was.

One of the definitely one of the big stars, if not the big star of westerns in that era.

And so I was wondering, so for Starr to say something like that about Heart, so did he ever express disdain for other performers for lacking authenticity or was it just aimed at heart?

WILLIAMSS Hart was the biggest star of the day, okay, And so of course, you know he made an easy target, right if you're gonna you're gonna shoot for somebody to shoot up there.

But but William's heart was me.

You know.

He was an Easterner.

He had traveled to I think it was to Minnesota for a summer and learned some Native American language and and he kind of milked that for the rest of his life.

But he wasn't really authentic.

He was a trained actor, he was a Shakespearean actor, so he's very very good, but he wasn't authentic.

What Henry Starr wanted to do was make an authentic picture, and so he actually hired people that were on his gang, people who were real outlaws that you know, could to convey the truth of it.

In terms of other acts.

Though, he had the utmost respect for Tom Mix.

Okay, he knew Tom Mix.

They both kind of grew up near each other and worked at Dewey Portland Cement when they were young men.

And he even came out and said, oh, yeah, you know, Tom Mix is authentic.

Now, he wasn't authentic bank robber or anything like that, but he was a true horseman, like he could do anything, and he had Star's utmost respect.

Starr also knew Will Rogers.

They when Star was on the Lamb, he would often hide out in wild West shows, okay, and so he would be like one of those performers that you know that you didn't really notice, but that's how he hid from the loss.

So he he knew Will Rogers, he knew Tom Mix, and he had a great deal and they you know, they liked him as well, so they had his up respect.

Okay.

So so during during the production, all right, so there was an issue where they found the lighting wasn't what it should have been, and their footage was unusable, and they had a solution.

It was to bring in a new director.

And his name is Patrick Sylvester is it mcgeannie mcgheey, mcgheeye.

Okay, So Patrick Sylvester mcgheaney and a man who had actually had an experience with Henry Starr during his outlaw days.

So can you tell us about their previous meeting and how it went once mcghey was at the Helm.

Yeah.

So so yeah, as you say, they have lighting problems, and the director knew that there was a studio called Chandmocks Studios in San Antonio that was run by a man who used to be a US Deputy Marshall, Patrick S.

Mcgheey, and so they, you know, asked him, and Patrick mcgheiney went, wait, you're making a movie with Henry Starr.

I know Henry Starr.

And he reminds them of a story.

And this was May nineteenth, eighteen ninety three.

So mcgheey is a nineteen year old He's a brakeman on the four oh three Santa Fe passenger train and he pulls that he stops short of the old Punkers station because he thinks there's going to be trouble ahead.

Well there was.

It was Henry Star, Bill Dolan and George Bittercreek Newcombe with guns on the platform.

And so he you know, walks over and you know, tells these fellows, you know that there's no money on the train or whatever, and Henry Star sticks a gun in his belly and says, you better tell them to move that train up here.

They were both nineteen years old.

Henry Star does not end up robbing that train.

Uh.

And then you know, as forty seven year old men, they they meet again.

Now, Patrick Sbcghini had, you know, since become a deputy marshal.

Then he met Gaston Milier.

If people know George Milier, he's the he's the famous French director, you know, the the Voyage to the Moon with the rocket ship in the eyeball.

This was his brother.

And so Patrick Sbcghini started learning filmmaking.

He started his own UH production company and studio Shandmark Studios.

Well mcgheey knew that Henry Starr had killed the man, and that man used to be a former deputy even though he had been kicked out of the forces and was only you know, working as a hired gun.

He said, I'm only going to work with Henry Starr if he can explain to me why he killed that man.

So they set up a meeting between mcgheee and Star, and Star explained, you know, his entire background, how he had been framed, as you know, by these deputy marshals, and that you know, this guy came out of nowhere with a gun and no warrant and he had, you know, defended himself.

Well, you know, we were talking earlier about how how authentic and engaging Henry Starr was.

Mcgheey was completely won over.

Mcgheey became Star's biggest advocate.

He even wrote two short stories because he was a writer as well, wrote two short stories about him, and even called him a Robin Hood when he when he died.

Like he just won over mcgheey and so they moved to production to Shamrocks Studios in San Antonio, except there was one big problem, and that problem was Henry Starr couldn't leave the state of Oklahoma because Arkansas would try to extradite him and send them Okay prison.

So the workaround was the Henry Starr had to be shipped with the cattle with the horses, and he hit among the horses to get into Shamrocks.

There's so many amusing stories in this book.

It's and that's just this one of them.

It's crazy.

Yeah, having to be transported with the cattle is it was probably a good bit of fun, I can imagine.

Okay.

So the film, so it required rewrites and reshoots, and it sounds like Star was pretty involved in them.

So what were the issues with what they originally shot and what would the rewrites add to the finished film.

So mckeinney was a writer.

He was a short story writer and he wrote books, so he had and then he had also been working on the film productions.

So he had a good sense of story and he knew that what was missing was a romantic interest and so he added a girlfriend or a love interest character to the story.

And then he also wanted to focus more on this former deputy Marshall that was killed and be able to explain that side of the story.

And of course mcgeey cast himself in that role.

And there's a there's a cast photo from the film where mcgeaniy looks like he's the star of the movie.

So yeah, he you know, he really he improved the picture a great deal.

And one of the big advantage to Shamrock Studios is that they had lighted stages, and so they no longer had that issue of poor lighting.

They tried to shoot it in real interiors like in Stroud, Oklahoma, where the double bank robbery took place.

They tried to shoot it in real interiors and it didn't work.

So, you know, Shamrock Studios was advanced enough that they actually had electric lighted stages.

Gotcha, okay.

So and once the film was completed, now it did play in certain theaters, right.

Yeah, it played in a lot of theaters, okay.

And so and how was it received.

Well, you had a lot of bad publicity, right with the Women's Christian Temperance Union, and then you had the largest theater owner saying we won't show any film showing crime or anything, you know, specifically with Henry Starr in it.

So that required that they had to take the film from small town to small town, and they hired an advanced man, a young kid, and he would go he would drive it to a certain town and the city fathers or whatever would be like, oh, we heard this is terrible.

It's going to corrupt our youth.

And so then they would have a special screening and then the people would go, well, no, this film is actually exactly the opposite, which was really what Henry Starr wanted to do was make a film that didn't glamorize a life of crime.

You know, he had a son, Teddy, who was about fourteen, and he's like, you know what, I don't want to do anything that would make him think that the kind of life I've led is a good life.

And so that was the whole point of it.

And then once people saw what it really was, they liked it and they thought, oh, this is a good film.

But the problem was he couldn't get it into enough big theaters, you know, with lots of seats.

So it wasn't quite the success that he had hoped for financially as.

Well, gotcha, And so because of that is is that what kept Star from having another film funded.

He wanted to make another motion picture, and so he pitched a film idea to the city of Claremore, Oklahoma, which which had these what they call radium waters.

They weren't really radium but that's what they called him.

And so he had this idea that he pitched it to their commercial club that he would play And so he's he's evolving from just telling his life story to playing a character now, and he would be an outlaw that was on the lamb.

He's injured and he in this town and the doctor gives him these radium waters that heals him, and he meets a woman and he finds the love of a good woman and changes his life around.

That was the pitch, and the commercial club said, you know, well, we'll we'll think about it.

In the meantime, Henry Starr had been gathering lots of gambling debts and he had all this mounting pressure of both gambling debts and his only way to maybe make a new life for himself is to make a new film.

But as anyone who's ever been in Hollywood knows, getting funding for movies is very very difficult.

Yes, right, so and so nothing has changed since nineteen twenty one.

People are still trying to get funding for films all these years later.

So he comes at a crossroads and you know, he's made this motion picture a debtor to the law, and the whole message of the debtor to the law is that he's completely reformed and crime does not pay.

But he's backed against the wall and he goes, you know what, I'm just going to rob one last thing.

All right.

Well, I.

Think, well, one, I think this is a genuinely like fascinating story.

I do think we should end it there.

But I'm so glad you wanted to come on here and tell us about your book.

And now the book is available now, and I am going to include links in the show notes to make it easier for listeners to find.

But is there anything else that we didn't cover that you think would be good to mention before we wrap up?

Yeah.

The one step that we kind of missed with the Ten Star Filmmakers was when John Abernathy formed that film company after the Wolf Hunt.

He made a film called The Bank Robbery Okay, and he wanted Benny Kent to direct it.

He was the cameraman and Benny Kent says, I don't know how to direct.

I just put a camera in his space and I cranked the box, and they say, who we need is Bill Tillman.

William Bill Tillman was a US Deputy Marshall.

He was one of the three guardsmen.

And if you know your fans might know that Sam Elliott played Bill Tilman in the nineteen ninety film a nineteen ninety nine film You Know My Name?

Okay, Yeah, so that was a biography of Bill Tillman.

So Bill Tillman then makes this movie, The Bank Robbery, and who does he cast.

He casts l Jennings right to be the bank robber.

So now those two know each other and they become friends.

So then when Beating Back the book is published, Bill Tilman and Al Jennings go to Pannhauser to pitch the making the film, and Al Jennings basically stabs Bill Tillman in the back and makes a deal behind his back, right.

So Bill Tilman is really really angry.

So he forms a company with one of the other three guardsmen.

They were famous outlaw, I mean famous lawman.

They formed the Nick Tilman Film Company, which eventually becomes Eagle Films, and they make a very famous film called Passing of the Oklahoma Outlaws, Okay, and they recreate the Battle of Ingles.

They cast the real man Arkansaw Tom to play himself.

He hires the real cat Annie and Little Bridges to play themselves and then this is what gets starred the first time on film.

After Henry Star robs the two banks at Stroud, he's shot in the hip, he's captured.

Bill Tillman shows up and says, I'll keep the mob from hanging you, lynching you if you agree to be in my film.

So they make a deal and it's more of a documentary style.

Henry Star wasn't an actor, but they filmed him being transported from the jail, you know, onto the train car into the Chandler prison.

So they use this documentary footage that was included in Passing of the Oklahoma Outlaws.

And that's actually the first time that Henry Star gets a taste of being on camera.

That's nineteen fifteen.

Okay, oh that's awesome.

Yeah, it's so interesting to hear about like these your real outlaws and law and ending up in the film industry because you don't think of you don't really associate that with entertainment, at least certainly nowadays.

Yeah.

I mean there was the story of like Wyatt Or going to Hollywood and being a consultant in his later days, but not proactively a director, producer, which is what these lawmen became.

Yeah, all right, well, Mark, where can people follow you on social media?

And do you have any other podcast appearances or anything else coming up that you'd like to mention?

Yeah.

So I'm going to be doing a book tour and so if people want to come, come out and see me.

I'm going to be in Fremont, California for the Bronco Billy Film Festival.

He was a famous silent film star.

This is at the Old Niles SNA Museum.

That's on July twenty seventh.

That's on July twenty seventh, and then I'm gonna be doing Senecon sixty one in Los Angeles August thirtieth and thirty first, and then I'm going to try to set up other appearances in Los Angeles.

But I've got a big tour coming in Arkansas and Oklahoma in October.

I'll be in Ventonville October second, which is the site of one of his biggest bank robberies, Fort Smith, where he was in prison.

I'll be there in October fourth, Bartlesville, Dewey.

I'm gonna be at the Full Circle Bookstore in ok See October thirteenth, Magic City Books in Tulsa, October fourteenth.

Hopefully I'm going to be absolutely everywhere and you'll get sick of hearing about me.

My website is henrystarbook dot com.

You can follow me.

I'm on Twitter, Instagram, even being even been delving into TikTok believe it or not.

Oh wow.

So yeah, So you can get the book.

You know, It's on Amazon, Barnes and Noble.

I'm a big supporter of independent bookstores.

Whenever I go into a city, I'd love to check out the independent bookstores.

So if you have a favorite one, you can call them up and say, hey, can you order this book.

You can also get it as an e book, So if you go to the University of North Texas Press website, thank you University of North Texas Press.

They've been fantastic.

Go to their website and they have a list of all the places that you can you can get the book.

All right, very cool?

Yes, and I am leaving.

I'm going to put all these links in the show description so if it'll be very easy for you to find them when you just look into the podcast episode.

But Mark, this was excellent.

Thanks, thanks so much for coming on.

Oh you're welcome.

I loved it.

Obviously I can talk all day about this subject.

Oh absolutely, all right, Well, thanks again.

I hope you enjoyed this interview.

I really enjoyed what I've been able to read from Mark's books so far, and it was great to have him on to talk about Henry Starr.

So please support Mark and pick up his book if you can.

We went pretty in depth into the book, but we didn't cover everything, so there's still more to the story that will interest you in.

All of Marx's links for social media and where you can pick up his book are in the show notes.

Next week, Dan Budnick returns to talk about gun Smoke.

We're covering episodes thirteen through fifteen, and episode thirteen has James Drury in it, so I'm really looking forward to seeing him and what I'm assuming will be a villain role.

Until then, if you're looking for more film related podcasts, please check out other shows on the Someone's Favorite Productions podcast network.

Thanks for listening.

Do you love movies?

So do I.

What's up, y'all.

It's KB and I Love Movies, inviting you to listen to the Conversation, a film podcast where passion meets perspective.

An opinion from the old school to the new.

I invite a guest on to discuss the movies that thrill us, challenge us, break our hearts, or even blow our minds.

There's always new episodes dropping wherever you get your podcasts, so join the conversation.

We don't just watch movies, we love talking about them too.

A conversation with KB Loves Movies a part of Someone's Favorite Productions podcast Network.

Thank you for listening to hear more shows from the Someone's Favorite Productions podcast Network.

Please select the link in the description