The 1964 Movie "For Those Who Think Young" -- Part 5

Following Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4

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Here is a better video of the entire movie.

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The heroine and hero of the movie For Those Who Think Young are 19-year-old Sandy Palmer and 20-year-old Gardner "Ding" Pruitt III. Sandy is poor, and Ding is rich.

Ding's maternal grandfather is Burford Sanford Cronin, a very wealthy businessman. He has donated money generously to Ocean Crest College, in California, where Sandy and Ding are students. As a major donor, Cronin sits on the college's Board of Directors and thus participates in the determination of the college's policies.

Ding's grandfather B.S. Cronin (right)
at a meeting of the college's Board of Directors

Near the movie's end, the movie audience learns that Cronin became wealthy in organized crime during the Prohibition years -- 1920 to 1933. In other words, he became wealthy by smuggling and selling alcohol while it was illegal in the United States. He had a mob nickname "Nifty" -- he was called "Nifty" Cronin.

Mobster "Nifty" Cronin being released from prison in 1931

Cronin spent the years 1926-1931 in prison. After he was released, he quit organized crime and used his remaining wealth to become a legal businessman and a generous philanthropist. He kept his mobster past as secret as he could.

In these circumstances, Cronin insists that his grandson Ding must marry a young woman from a high-society family. Cronin figures that such a marriage might add much respectability to his own family's criminal past.

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Because Cronin wants his grandson Ding to marry into a high-society family, he objects to Ding's continuing romance with Sandy. Normally, Ding seduces women and then soon breaks up with them. Since Sandy has avoided Ding's seductions -- by refusing Ding's invitations to go to his apartment to drink alcohol alone with him -- Ding continues to date Sandy in a platonic relationship that does not involve alcohol and sex.

Cronin fears that Ding eventually might marry Sandy, and so Cronin tries to break them up as a romantic couple. Cronin visits Sandy's Uncle Woody and offers to provide the money for Sandy to transfer to a better college on the East Coast. When Woody refuses to participate in such a scheme, Cronin decides to pressure him by causing trouble for the nightclub that Woody now owns in partnership with Uncle Sid.

Cronin uses his position on the college's Board of Directors to cause the college to launch a secret investigation of the nightclub's enforcement of the legal drinking age. A female professor of Sociology volunteers to visit the nightclub incognito to order to record cases when under-age students are served alcohol.

As it turns out, Uncle Woody and Uncle Sid effectively enforce the legal drinking age in their nightclub. Under-age customers are served only soft drinks, such as Pepsi.

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Eventually, Cronin takes further action to cause trouble for the nightclub. He still associates with several of his former fellow mobsters, who all are old men now, like himself. Cronin manages to get those old mobsters hired temporarily at the nightclub. Now as nightclub employees, the old mobsters allow all the college students to enter without checking their identification cards and ink-stamping the hands of the students who are too young to drink alcohol.

Of course, many of the minor-age students happily order alcoholic drinks. Cronin tips off the police department, which subsequently raids the nightclub and arrests all the minor-age drinkers, all the nightclub employees, and the owners Sid and Woody.

Cronin apparently figures that the police raid will bankrupt Sid and Woody, who then will be compelled to agree to Cronin's offer to send Sandy away to an East Coast college -- away from her boyfriend Ding.

In these circumstances, Sandy initially agrees to transfer away to an East Coast college. By agreeing to so so, she figures that Cronin will arrange for the police to drop all charges related to the under-age drinking at the nightclub. If the charges indeed will be dropped, then her Uncle Sid and Uncle Woody will be able to maintain their profitable ownership of the nightclub.

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I will continue this article in Part 6.