MOVIES: G for Gold

It would be difficult to turn a story about a boy and his pet hawk into a movie that was anything other than clean. But when Baker’s Hawk began running last week at 350 U.S. moviehouses, it was evident that cab driver-turned-movie mogul Lyman Dayton had taken no chances. Hawk contains no sex, no profanity beyond “damn” and “hell,” no bloodshed and only a suggestion of lawlessness (a band of vigilantes reacts to a crime wave that the audience never sees). Burl Ives, who teaches the boy (Lee Montgomery) how to train his bird, helps the movie get over some of its saccharinity with a sensitive performance. But Clint Walker as the father is saddled with lines like, “You gotta learn to control your own life.”

Not surprisingly, Hawk flew to a G rating, which is just what Dayton had intended. To him, the G does not stand for general audiences (as the Motion Picture Association of America says it does in its rating system), it stands for gold. Dayton, who also broke in as a director on the movie, expects to gross $20 million from Hawk and recover its $1.2 million production cost in about a month.

Tired of Sex. That would be about in line with his record so far. Dayton, at 35, heads Doty-Dayton Productions, a Hollywood company that in four years has turned out five movies, and all profitable—a phenomenal performance by the standards of cinema finance. The company now is releasing as many films, counting its own flicks and pickups from other producers, as Walt Disney Productions. Though there is a belief in Hollywood that people who clamor for cleaner movies do not go to them, Dayton says: “There is an audience out there that is getting tired of sex scenes and gutter language. There is a need for more family films. Disney makes them, but it does not have the market sewed up.”

Dayton knows where his audiences are: in the small towns and cities of heartland America. Baker’s Hawk did not open in New York City last week, nor in Chicago, San Francisco or Boston. Instead it premiered in such places as Salt Lake City, Savannah, Boise and Topeka. Says Dayton: “Major cities just aren’t where our audiences are.”

His films are breaking box-office records in Utah and Idaho. They deal basically with pioneer-children stories, action adventures with strong moral kickers—all shamelessly calculated to make kids and adults laugh, cry and walk away feeling entertained, not emotionally drained. Dayton’s first film, made in 1973, was Where the Red Fern Grows, a tale of a boy and his two hunting dogs. Financed with the help of Dayton’s surgeon father-in-law, Dr. George Doty, Fern cost $500,000 but already has grossed $8 million. It starred Dayton’s 16-year-old nephew, Stewart Petersen. who has become a fixture in many D-D films, and James Whitmore. Next came Seven Alone, about orphans struggling to survive on the Oregon Trail. It cost $500,000, starred Aldo Ray and has pulled in $12 million.

Dayton’s budgets are growing. One of his new films, Powder Keg, is expected to cost $5 million. But Dayton strives to hold down costs by using few big-name stars, shooting his films quickly (usually in six weeks or less), and doing distribution and television advertising himself. D-D creates its own commercials for its films, and pummels local markets with five-to seven-day TV blitzes before a film opens. Another innovation is the “host” system. Under it, D-D representatives collect the company’s share of box-office receipts nightly at each theater, speeding cash flow. Says Dayton: “The faster you can get your money out, the sooner you can go into production on your next film.”

Learning Process. Dayton, a devout Mormon, studied radio and television at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, later wound up as a cab driver and part-time film technician in Los Angeles before deciding that the only way he could break into the business in a big way would be to become a film maker himself. He now drives a brown Cadillac Seville (license: GRATED) and is working on a deal to merge with a California book publisher. Why? Says he: “It looks to us like a synergistic merger. That’s a word I just learned. It means we should be able to help each other”—by getting films into book form before they are released to theaters.

Many critics have not taken well to Dayton’s movies, calling them “desultory,” “terribly trite” and “poorly acted.” Dayton is unfazed. In his view, the critics that count are the audiences who flock to his flicks. The professional ones can go to . . . err . . . heck.