Teeny-boppers love him. Journalist Marie Brenner describes him as "an utterly charming Irishman who could make you believe just about anything in less than 30 minutes." Composer Elmer Bernstein says: "he possesses a grandeur of vision that is quite staggering." His daughter Teresa, 15, thinks he is "just like a good friend." At first meeting, Tom Laughlin's glittering blue eyes and ready grin make him seem the soul of affability. But beware. The smallest infraction can trip a temper that has become as infamous as Mussolini's. Tom's face grows scarlet, and his voice sounds like the Devil's in The Exorcist. "It's an awesome, frightening experience," says a colleague. At 44, happy-faced Tom may be Hollywood's most successful maverick, but he is also one of its most feared producers.
Can this be the peace-loving Billy Jack, the tousled loner of Laughlin's 1971 cult hit of the same name? Can this be the hero of The Trial of Billy Jack (1974), who mused on the tragedies of My Lai and Kent State? It can. To Laughlin, the private fury and the public saint are a smooth amalgam of aesthetics and justice. "The youth of this country have only two heroes," he claims modestly, "Ralph Nader and Billy Jack." Laughlin says to friends, "Billy Jack will institute political change."
If so, it may be pure chaos. Billy Jack movies are confusing. Laughlin, who wrote the scripts for both films, portrays Billy as a passive fellow—within limits. Billy's enemies are big business, cops, state officials and rednecks. He supports "dissidents"—mainly students and Indians who, he makes clear, live off money from the Government they claim is hounding them. Billy likes to meditate but the movies' emotional climax comes when massed throngs scream as he starts to speak.
Lurid Dreams. When these contradictions are pointed out, Tom seethes. "He's really deeply sensitive," says a friend. "He wants to be taken seriously." Tom is so miffed by critical scorn that he has started a widely advertised critics contest, inviting the public to have a go at the spoilsports who "sarcastically attack the films they love" and soliciting pity for film makers "who feel so helpless when all of their work . . . is destroyed by some inflated critic smugly showing off his intellectual superiority."
Laughlin is not only a doer; he is a dreamer. His Jungian analyst receives daily tapes of Tom's dreams. One amanuensis who transcribed the tapes recalls, "The dreams were lurid. Lots of sexual details, so much so I simply don't believe he really had such dreams but was titillated by having me listen to them."
Tom's wife Dolores ("Body") Taylor (who starred with him in Billy Jack) must sometimes think she is living in a nightmare. Laughlin reveres her and their three children. Yet Body is often in tears after a session with Tom. "There's a bursting rage in Tom over the privations of his childhood," explains one of his friends. Laughlin grew up in Milwaukee; his parents were often on welfare. As a football player, he kicked his way through various Midwest colleges. It was not until he saw a production of A Streetcar Named Desire that he decided to become an actor.