Actor-writer-director of Billy Jack fame
NEW YORK - Actor-writer-director Tom Laughlin, whose production and marketing of Billy Jack set a standard for breaking the rules on and off screen, has died.
Laughlin’s daughter told The Associated Press that he died Thursday at Los Robles Hospital and Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, Calif. Laughlin was 82. Teresa Laughlin, who acted in the Billy Jack movies, said the cause of death was complications from pneumonia.
Billy Jack was released in 1971 after a long struggle by Tom Laughlin to gain control of the low-budget, self-financed movie, a model for guerrilla filmmaking.
He wrote, directed and produced Billy Jack and starred as the ex-Green Beret who defends a progressive school against the bigots of a conservative Western community. The film became a counterculture favorite and the theme song, “One Tin Soldier,” was a hit single for the rock group Coven.
Laughlin was in his mid-30s when he created the character Billy Jack with his wife and collaborator, Delores Taylor. Billy Jack was half-white, half-American Indian, a Vietnam veteran and practitioner of martial arts who had come to hate war.
Billy Jack was first seen in the 1968 biker movie Born Losers but became widely known after Billy Jack, the second of four films Laughlin made about him (only three made it to theaters).
Laughlin wasn’t only a filmmaker. He ran for president as both a Republican and Democrat and founded a Montessori school in California.
He was an opponent of nuclear energy and a longtime advocate for American Indians and bonded with another actor-activist, Marlon Brando.
Arkansas, Pages 13 on 12/17/2013