with his girlfriend. The film was intended to be the first of a trilogy entitled We Are All Christ. It premiered in 1963 under the original title Among the Thorns, which was changed to The Young Sinner upon its 1965 re-release. In 1960, Laughlin planned to make a film, Poison in Our Land, based on the true story of a Texas couple affected by atomic radiation, but the project was never realized. Leaving Hollywood (1961–1966) In 1959, Laughlin and his wife founded a Montessori preschool in Santa Monica, California. By 1961, Laughlin had left the film business to devote all of his time to the school, which by 1964 had become the largest school of its kind in the United States. It was profiled by Time in July of that year. However, by 1965, the school had gone bankrupt. One of his students was Christian Brando, son of Laughlin's friend, Marlon Brando. Billy Jack years (1967–1977) In 1965, Laughlin told the Milwaukee Sentinel that he planned to make a film on the life of a noted Catholic priest, Father William DuBay. However, the picture did not get past the planning stages. Two years later, in 1967, he wrote, directed (as T. C. Frank), and starred in the motorcycle-gang exploitation film The Born Losers. This was the first picture in which the character of Billy Jack appeared. It was a surprise box-office hit. After The Born Losers, Laughlin was set to begin a film project with backing from such figures as Marlon Brando, Jack Lemmon, Candice Bergen, and director Robert Wise. The movie was to be a documentary on the issues facing African Americans in the 1960s and would have focused greatly on the life of Martin Luther King Jr., followed by a discussion of race. However, the film was never made. He followed this up with the sequel to The Born Losers, Billy Jack, in 1971. American International Pictures initially agreed to distribute the picture, but after viewing it, the studio refused to release the film unless many of the political references – as well as frontal nudity – were cut. This led the Laughlins to withhold the sound reels of the movie, which in effect made it a silent film. Eventually, Laughlin made a distribution deal with Warner Bros., but he disapproved of the studio's marketing of the film, sued Warner, and re-released the picture himself in 1973. The