Prescott newspaper on the passing of Tom Laughlin

As all of you BJ/TL fans know by now, actor Tom Laughlin passed away yesterday and into cinematic history.

This is from the Daily Courier, the newspaper which serves Prescott and surrounding communities in Yavapai County, Arizona. I happen to live in Prescott Valley, about twenty minutes' drive from downtown Prescott and the historic Courthouse Square and walk the Square around 2-5 times a week. The Courthouse and city are historic enough, but it's extra cool knowing that two of the most indelible scenes in this movie were filmed here, on purpose as it turns out. (read the article)

In a previous posting only a few weeks ago, I posted that the filming location for the infamous "flour" scene had closed down after many decades in business.

Here is the link:

http://dcourier.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1086&ArticleID=126498

Here is the text of the article:

The Yavapai County Courthouse Plaza looks pretty much the same as it did in November 1969 when Billy Jack whupped a dozen bad guys all by himself.

And when Tom Laughlin returned a few times to visit Prescott, people still recognized him as Billy Jack, a "half-breed" Vietnam vet vigilante character he played in four movies. The film simply titled "Billy Jack" was by far the most popular, and the only one filmed partly in Prescott.

Laughlin died Thursday near his Thousand Oaks, Calif., home at the age of 82.

During a 2005 visit to the scenes of his most famous movie, Laughlin told The Daily Courier he chose Prescott for a locale at the insistence of one of his movie's major financial backers, Chuck Kettering, who happened to also be a major benefactor of Prescott College.

"It was a love story," said Laughlin, whose wife Delores Taylor played the woman Billy Jack fell in love with. "Billy Jack and Jean have a magnificent love affair and he protects her and he protects the kids" who attend the school she founded.

The fight scene on the plaza is what helped fuel the movie's cult-like status, however - not only because it was the first U.S. film to popularize the martial arts, but also because Billy Jack uttered a memorable line before the fight began.

"I'm gonna take this right foot, and I'm gonna whop you on that side of your face," Billy tells corrupt local political boss Stewart Posner as he points to the left side of Posner's face. "And you wanna know something? There's not a damn thing you're gonna be able to do about it."

Another locale in the movie also looks much the same as it did four decades ago: Lynx Lake. Billy convinces Posner's son Bernard to drive his Corvette into the lake.

The Palace Saloon also plays a part in the film, as Bernard bets his buddies he can get one of the hippy girls from the Freedom School to go out with him. They get to howl at Bernard as the girl makes a fool of him.

Unfortunately, another downtown location for the film, Kendall's Famous Burgers & Ice Cream, just closed down this summer. Back then it was called Dent's ice cream parlor.

The parlor owner refuses to serve the American Indian children from the Freedom School. Bernard thinks it's funny to dump white flour on them so they can be served as white people. Bernard's buddy nicknamed Dinosaur then punches a young Indian boy named Martin in the stomach.

By the way, that young boy, Stan Rice, grew up to become the president of the Yavapai-Prescott Indian Tribe in real life.

Bernard doesn't think it's funny any more when Billy Jack arrives at the ice cream shop. Billy whacks Bernard and tosses Dinosaur through the front window.

Billy Jack is one of the better-known films to be shot in Prescott and Yavapai County, but local film historian Tom Slaback has counted a total of about 300. Unfortunately, Billy Jack is among the worst, he said.

Slaback would have been here to see the film shooting but he was in the Navy at the time, as he was when the movie was released in 1971. So he went to see it in Lancaster, Penn., near where he was stationed.

"Every time Billy Jack clocked someone, the whole audience just was insane," Slaback recalls.

The low-budget independent film didn't do so well at the box office, but then its re-release in 1973 raked in $40 million as Laughlin personally oversaw its distribution. "One Tin Soldier" from the soundtrack also made it to the Top 40 list.

Slaback did have one scene he loved in Billy Jack. During the opening credits, cowboys round up wild horses on the north side of Stillman Lake near present-day Paulden.

"The opening credits are tremendous, and they should have stopped right there," he said.

Follow Joanna Dodder on Twitter: @joannadodder.