“Go ahead and hate your neighbor
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won’t be any trumpets blowing,
Come the judgment day,
On the bloody morning after
One tin soldier rides away.”~One Tin Soldier
The lyrics elicit only one image for fans of the 1971 film that melded a half-breed American Navajo Indian and Green Beret Vietnam Veteran martial artist with education, politics and bigotry and yet resulted in a massively uncalculated following for its hero and a super hit that caught an unexpected hold on the hearts of Americans. The image is of Billy Jack being taken away to face the legal ramifications of having violently defended the hippie-themed Freedom School and its students from the townspeople who tormented them.
The film was brought into the spotlight again this week as fans said goodbye to the other and last half of the couple that made Billy Jack a classic not only in drama, action or even independent films, but love stories as well.
Delores Taylor died in Southern California March 23 at the age of 85. Taylor co-starred with, Tom Laughlin, her real-life husband, in three of the four Billy Jack series films as Jean Roberts—the leader of the Freedom School that Billy Jack defends.
Laughlin—credited with changing the way movies were marketed in Hollywood after directing and starring in the Billy Jack series—died December 12, 2014 at 82 from complications of pneumonia.
According to The Associated Press, Taylor’s daughter, Teresa Laughlin, said Taylor died March 23 of natural causes at the Motion Picture and Television Fund Home near Los Angeles. She said her mother had suffered from dementia.
Taylor was the other half of the love affair that quietly simmers under the surface of the more prevalent relational issues in Billy Jack, but is nevertheless the obvious driving force behind Jack’s passion for defending the school.
Some sixty-somethings from just outside St. Louis, Missouri hold their own special memories of the Billy Jack films and especially their blonde, soft-spoken heroine who at the height of her fame traveled all the way from Hollywood to give the commencement speech to the 1972 graduating class of St. Charles High School. They took to social media this week in remembrance of her via a closed Facebook group.
It started with a post: “You may have graduated from SCHS (St. Charles High School) if you recognize this woman…” The administrator of the group had shared an Associated Press article about Taylor’s passing. Well over 200 people struck an assortment of Facebook’s Emojis with a thumbs up, a beating heart or a crying face showing an animated tear, and numerous graduates of the school and members of the group shared their memories and offered condolences on the post.
There is no doubt the graduates of St. Charles High School and many of the members of the group itself remember the significance of Taylor. And whether the idea came from him specifically or the student council as a whole, most gave credit to Winston Wolf, president of the 1972 graduating class of St. Charles High School.
The city of St. Charles is a suburb lying just northwest of St. Louis. Founded in 1769 as Les Petites Côtes, or “The Little Shores,” by Louis Blanchette, a French-Canadian fur trader, it is the third-oldest city in Missouri, was once the state’s capital and was long ago considered the last “civilized” stop by the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1804.
But it wasn’t the history of the city that beckoned Taylor to the shore of the Missouri River. It was a group of student council kids who wanted a movie star with progressive yet wholesome ideals to send them out into the world at graduation.
“The student council was in charge of the commencement program,” said Wolf, now a company vice president in upstate New York. “We thought, ‘Let’s get someone here who can talk about different topics.’ I remember in 1972, it was an interesting time. It was a time in history when a lot of things were going on, a lot of students were watching Billy Jack who felt like the underdogs. [The characters in the movie] stood up to people and they won.”
And like the visionaries in the movie, the students of St. Charles High School decided to do things differently than their predecessors in choosing their commencement speaker. “We wrote her a letter. We probably didn’t call her because that would have cost money,” Wolf said. “But we bought her a first class ticket on TWA and a couple nights stay in a local hotel. I got to pick her up from the airport.”
The St. Charles High School yearbook ran photos and a tribute to Taylor and her appearance in 1973. Brief and to the point, it holds two historical nuggets—one, that this type of appearance was a first for Taylor, and two, that like her character in the films, she was always thinking of someone other than herself. The entry read:
“425 graduates, families and friends hear Ms. Taylor”
“At the request of the senior class officers, Delores Taylor, star of Billy Jack, flew from California to speak at commencement. This was the first such appearance Ms. Taylor has made. She requested that any honorarium be given to a needy person. In accordance with her wishes, a ‘Delores Taylor Bookstore Scholarship’ has been established as the senior class gift to the school. Money from the fund will be used to aid those pupils who cannot afford to purchase textbooks. Dr. James Evans, president of the Board of Education, presented 425 diplomas. The invocation was given by student body secretary Nancy Pfost. The A Capella choir sang ‘Walk Into Your World.’ A quartet, John Staub, Becky Shirley, Marilyn Barban and Les Hillman sang ‘One Tin Soldier,’ the theme from Billy Jack. The student addresses were given by Karen Hayes and Joe Pierce. Student body president Tom Brockmann gave the benediction.”
“She was very encouraging to our class and she challenged us to make a difference,” said graduate, Bill Walkenhorst.
Todd Luerding of St. Charles said he still has Taylor’s autograph on a commencement program from the event. “My older brother was graduating. I just remember the Billy Jack gal was there. I was right at the age of having seen Billy Jack about seven times, so this was cool,” Luerding said later. “I’ve not given it much thought before now, but after checking the date, I was 12 when Billy Jack came out. The movie had hippies, love, music and of course a guy who knew karate. It was kind of a man versus unfair authority movie. I remember [Taylor] was nice when she autographed the program. She was a movie star, at least in my 12-year-old eyes.”
According to USA Today, Taylor was born in 1932 in Winner, South Dakota and grew up near the Rosebud Indian Reservation.
The character 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. A model for guerrill filmmaking, Billy Jack was released in 1971 after a long struggle by Laughlin to gain control of the self-financed, low-budget movie. Its theme song, One Tin Soldier, was a hit single for the rock group Coven.
A “reluctant” celebrity, according to her daughter, Taylor was nominated for a Golden Globe for New Star of the Year in 1972.
“So they won their just rewards
Now they stood before the treasure
On the mountain dark and red
Turned the stone and looked beneath it
Peace on earth, was all it said.”~One Tin Soldier
