Tom Laughlin

Tom Laughlin was an actor, writer, director and producer best known as the creator of Billy Jack, the half-Cherokee Vietnam veteran he played in five films from the late 1960s through the mid 1980s.

First introduced in the 1967 release The Born Losers, Billy Jack was a contradiction of sorts — stoic, and ostensibly a pacifist, he was often driven to violence in response to authoritarian forces, displaying foridable martial arts skills acquired during his military service.

In the second film in the series, Billy Jack, the title character defends a counterculture school against the narrow-minded leaders of a small town near the Indian reservation where the school is located. It became an enormous box-office success when Laughlin, who had made the film independently and sold it to Warner Bros., re-acquired the rights after a disappointing initial theatrical run and re-released it with the support of a large-scale publicity campaign that tapped into the burgeoning youth culture and resulted in estimated earnings of $80 million.

He reprised the character in the 1974 release The Trial of Billy Jack and the 1986 release Billy Jack Goes to Washington.

Born in Milwaukee, Laughlin played football at Marquette University and at the University of South Dakota, where he met Dolores Taylor — his eventual wife, creative collaborator and costar — who played Jean Roberts, head of the Freedom School, in the Billy Jack movies and cowrote their screenplays.

He broke into acting in the mid 1950s with roles in such television series as Climax!, Navy Log, The Millionaire and Lux VIdeo Theatre. Additional TV work included Man with a Camera, Wagon Train, Riverboat and Tales of Wells Fargo.

His film work included Tea and Sympathy, South Pacific, Gidget and Tall Story.

Laughlin died December 12, 2013, in Thousand Oaks, California. He was 82.