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Studying the movie For Those Who Think Young has caused me to rethink a previous article that I wrote -- Why Penny and Robbie risked pregnancy. There I failed to mention the possibility that one factor in that pregnancy might have been alcohol.
According to a scholarly article, binge drinking is a significant factor in unintended pregnancies. The statistics are illustrated by this chart.
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| Correlation of binge drinking and unintended pregnancy |
We can't say for sure whether Penny Johnson was a binge drinker or whether she drank at all. We can say, though, that binge drinking generally should be a significant factor in speculations about the causes of her unintended pregnancy.
We con't know whether the movie character Johnny Castle was a binge drinker, but the actor Patrick Swayze was an alcoholic. On one occasion his wife even moved out of their home because of his drinking. The book The Fans' Love Story, which I recently reviewed, includes an interview of Mike Porterfield, who was working as a cook at a filming location. Porterfield said that Swayze bought "a six-pack or two of beer" every evening.
The book reported also that the watermelons in the movie were based on resort employees' practice of serving vodka-spiked watermelons at their parties.
In these circumstances, it's reasonable to suppose that the movie characters Johnny Castle and Billy Kostecki were binge drinkers. It's reasonable to suppose further that Penny Johnson was a binge drinker too and that her pregnancy was at least partially a consequence of her binge drinking.
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Because of Baby Houseman's observations of binge drinking among the employees at Kellerman's in the summer of 1963, she would have been especially interested in the anti-alcohol message in the movie For Those Who Think Young, which she watched in the summer of 1964.
Much of the movie revolves around the issue of whether college students younger than the legal drinking age, 21, should be allowed to drink alcohol. The movie distinguishes between the drinking by under-age male students and by under-age female students.
In one scene, Uncle Woody responds to college teacher Dr. Pauline Swenson, who has argued that no college students should be allowed to drink alcohol. He points out that many college students are old enough to drink legally:
Almost half your students are old enough to vote, marry, join the Armed Forces or demand the service of any drink they might choose to order. ... They are men, Doctor. You spell that M-E-N.Uncle Woody does not argue that under-age college men should be allowed to drink, and he does not allow them to drink in his nightclub. However, his response indicates that legal-age men should be able to drink without interference.
In another scene, however, Uncle Woody is talking with his niece, Sandy Palmer, whom he is trying to control. He forbids her to come into the nightclub where he works, because she might become involved romantically with trouble-making men there.
Uncle WoodyIn Uncle Woody's discussions about under-age college students, the problem of pregnancy comes up in his discussion about an under-age female student. If a female college-student becomes pregnant, then she will not graduate from college.
It [the nightclub] is a dive, and you're not a kid any more. Why don't you try to realize that?
Sandy Palmer
I'm 19, and according to the laws of California, I can drive, get married, and I can even have a baby.
Uncle Woody
Don't you dare have a baby before you have a diploma!
Uncle Woody forbids Sandy to come into the nightclub, because he foresees that she might begin drinking with men there. Such drinking might lead to Sandy becoming pregnant, which would prevent her from graduating from college.
The drinking problem is different for college women than for college men.
If Johnny and Penny both were binge drinkers, then the problem was different for Penny, because she might become pregnant.
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In the early 1960s, the legal drinking age was 21 almost everywhere in the USA. Although younger people managed to drink anyway, society applied a variety of measures to discourage and prevent them from drinking alcohol.
One positive measure was to encourage people to drink soft drinks instead of alcohol. For example, the Pepsi Cola company advertised Pepsi as a drink For those who think young. In other words, drinking Pepsi instead of alcohol was a characteristic of the younger, Baby-Boom generation.
This advertising slogan targeted especially women who had passed the age of 21. Since women generally try to appear younger than their actual ages, the slogan suggested that drinking soft drinks instead of alcoholic made them appear to be younger. To the extent that the slogan did influence women along those lines, the advertising was a profitable success.
Pepsi began advertising with the slogan For those who think young in 1961. The following sample of the advertisements show that they targeted primarily women.
The actor and character Woody Woodbury reported in an interview that the movie For Those Who Think Young was funded and controlled by Pepsi Cola company.
[The move] took its title directly from the current Pepsi slogan of the day. According to Woody, the reason came down to who was funding the picture. "That's where the money came from for the movie -- Pepsi Cola. Rosalind Russell, who was married to one of the head guys at Pepsi. She was in on the deal."In addition to using the Pepsi slogan as the movie's title, the company placed its logo into various scenes. After Uncle Sid and Uncle Woody took over the nightclub, they installed a Pepsi dispenser at the bar and made all the bartenders and waitresses wear t-shirts displaying the Pepsi red-white-and-blue stripes.
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| A Pepsi dispenser on the nightclub bar |
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| A bartender and waitress displaying the Pepsi stripes |
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I will continue this article in Part 5.
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For the last two of the following videos, you have to click on the image and then click on the link Watch this video on YouTube.
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