The Two Faces of Tom

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.

Purely Occidental. Not any actor, but a star in his own films. In the mid-fifties, a hopeful Tom and Body arrived in Hollywood. Recalls Joshua Logan, who gave Tom small roles in South Pacific and Tall Story, "Tom had tremendous personal ambition, strength and drive." It was not until 1969, however, that Tom got financing for his Billy Jack, a tale of a noble halfbreed who protects the flower children of the Freedom School. Warner Bros, released it on the B circuit. Furious, Tom stole the master soundtrack and threatened to destroy it unless he was given distribution rights. The studio capitulated and helped Tom blitz the country with the movie. Teen-agers soon made it a cult film and Billy Jack made more than $40 million. Tom was a hero among Hollywood producers--he had subdued a major studio.

Trial, in which the Freedom School is pitted against the Establishment, was launched last fall. Critics catcalled, but the movie lapped up $21 million in three weeks. Dissatisfied, however, Tom pulled Trial. He re-released it last spring. Trial turned out to be too long (4 hours) for fans to see again; it flopped.

Now Tom is banking on his new movie, Master Gunfighter, to restore his deflated popularity. In preparation, the anticritics campaign has been spruced up ("Who is Pauline Kael? Robert Altman's imagination?"). The film is about the exploitation of the California Indians in 1836. Laughlin plays Indian-loving Finley McCord. The archvillain is Paulo (Ron O'Neal), a suave sophisticate who has traveled the Orient and returned with the martial skills of Kung Fu and some fancy weaponry. Finley is obliged to duel to the death with Paulo, using samurai swords. The end, however, is purely Occidental. McCord and his wife (Paulo's sister) ride off together into the sunset. Fadeout.

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