In 1964, when I was 13, I went to the movies to see "A Hard Day's Night," and it was a double feature.

The other movie — the movie I've chosen for 1964 in my "imaginary movie project" — was "For Those Who Think Young."



That poster says it's "The swingin'est young people's picture of the year," and I saw it immediately after that other "young people's picture," "A Hard Day's Night." Two entirely different visions of "young."

Compare Pamela Tiffin (who was was 22 in 1964) with Pattie Boyd (who was 20):



I made both of those screen grabs, and I can tell you Tiffin was done up like that for a day at the beach. Tiffin oozed maturity. Movies like this were called "beach party" movies, but her character was a college student who was continually attending to her studies and she was insistent that her boyfriend, the rich kid (James Darren), treat her with complete respect. Boyd played a schoolgirl whose role was to gawp at the Beatles and say her one line, "Prisoners?!"

Why didn't I pick "A Hard Day's Night" for my project? It fits the requirement that I need to have seen it in the theater when it came out. But I'd already rewatched "A Hard Day's Night" a time or 2, and I want to compare my original response with what I feel now, so... too much static. And there's something specific I remember about seeing "For Those Who Think Young" when I was 13: I enjoyed it more than "A Hard Day's Night."

But why? That's a mystery to solve. First, I loved Bob Denver. The show "Gilligan's Island" debuted in the fall of that year, but I knew him from my favorite TV show, "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis," which was on from 1959 to 1963. I had a 8"x10" glossy photo — I'd sent in for it — of Denver as Maynard G. Krebs. I loved the beatnik character who questioned all of society's conventions — especially work.

Let me show you about 10 minutes of "For Those Who Think Young," beginning with the Bob Denver character. He's meditating, and this is 4 years before The Beatles took up Transcendental Meditation. This segment continues with some Tiffin/Darren interplay and reaches a peak with Bob Denver buried in the sand using his mouth in a way that I found gut-bustingly hilarious in 1964. And don't miss Nancy Sinatra:



Did you see that early #MeToo wokeness? Nancy hits Bob for kissing her in an entirely nonphysical way. The meditation is so strong.

The Bob Denver character, Kelp, is employed as Darren's assistant, and we see him running over to serve him and Tiffin some drinks in tall glasses. Before running off, Kelp then slips one of those glasses into his swimsuit pocket, where it bulges like an erection I didn't notice in '64.

The Darren character (Ding) inquires of his disapproving girlfriend, "What have I done?," and Tiffin snarks, "Oh, nothing since the day you were born! Need help? Yell for Kelp."

You know, Bob Dylan was not above rhyming "kelp" and "help":

Now the beach is deserted except for some kelp...
You always responded when I needed your help

That doesn't mean the dialogue in "For Those Who Think Young" is Nobelworthy. (By the way, the Jerry Lewis character in "The Nutty Professor" (1963) is also named Kelp — Professor Julius Kelp.)

I had to force myself to watch "For Those Who Think Young." The acting — most of it — was bad and the production values were very low. The pacing was not comical, and much of the story was about a nightclub comedian — Tiffin's uncle, Woody Woodbury — whose act was extremely popular with the college students, but it just wasn't funny at all. In the video above, scroll back to 20:55:00 to see some of this act. It's excruciating.

I enjoyed the priggish lady professor played by Ellen Burstyn. She's out to get the nightclub, which she thinks is a bad influence on the students, and she tries ordering fruit juice but ends up drinking a lot of booze — very amusingly, using a straw to elegant comic effect. If you watch this segment, you'll also get a lot of Tina Louise (singing badly and then dancing sexily) and some Paul Lynde (including his getting under the covers in bed with Woody), but the main thing I want you to see here is how wonderful Ellen Burstyn is:



Obviously, the entire movie is there on YouTube. I just highlighted the 2 best parts. It's not really a watchable movie. I know what I enjoyed at the time — that Bob Denver routine with his mouth upside down and a face painted on his chin. Childish high jinks. Now, all that delighted me was Ellen Burstyn. A decade later she won a Best Actress Oscar. But for then she was tucked away in a little role, making the most of a straw and the old comedy idea of unwittingly drinking an intoxicating beverage.

I really need to get around, at long last, to watching my DVD of "The Last Picture Show" (with Ellen Burstyn). Crazy to have that sitting on the shelf and be watching such a stupid thing as "For Those Who Think Young." But I did it for you, dear readers, for you and this imaginary movie project. And I'm 1/3 of the way through "Dr. Zhivago," so the task goes on.