"“Listen, children, to a story that was written long ago ... ” So begins “One Tin Soldier” the relentlessly catchy theme song to Billy Jack, the 1971 cult film classic about a karate-chopping half-white/half-Indian ex–Green Beret who tends to “go berserk” when he sees Native Americans being abused by redneck whites.

The creation of Billy Jack, the character Tom Laughlin portrayed in four films (all of which he co-wrote and directed), can be traced to the mid-1950s, when the football jock/aspiring filmmaker was dating a University of South Dakota art major named Delores Taylor, who would eventually become his wife, co-writer and co-star. As the couple prepares to bring a restored print of Billy Jack to this year’s Los Angeles Film Festival, the 78-year-old Laughlin credits Taylor for inspiring the character that shaped so much of his life.

“Dody is from a small town called Winner, South Dakota,” he explains, speaking by phone from the couple’s Ventura County home. “She was a pale platinum blonde at the time and she had lived around Native Americans all her life. They would always come over and ask if ‘Little Yellowhead’ could come out to play. So when I met her, she was deeply passionate about Indian rights. She was on a mission.

“One time when I was there courting her, she and I drove through a section of town with all these rundown shacks and abandoned cars covered with cardboard and carpet that people were living in,” Laughlin recalls. “‘What the hell is that?’ I asked, and she said, ‘That’s where the Indians live.’ And I couldn’t believe it. I was so incensed.”"

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Billy Jack Is Back at the Los Angeles Film Festival (LA Weekly 6/18)