• Today’s Movie: Play Misty For Me
• Year of Release: 1971
• Stars: Clint Eastwood, Jessica Walter, Donna Mills
• Director: Clint Eastwood

This movie is on my list of essential films.

NOTE: This installment of Sports Analaogies Hidden in Classic Movies is not being done as part of a blog-a-thon.  Instead, this is a monthly event hosted by MovieRob called Genre Grandeur.  The way it works is every month MovieRob chooses a film blogger to pick a topic and a movie to write about, then also picks a movie for MovieRob to review.  At the end of the month, MovieRob posts the reviews of all the participants.

For August 2025, the honor of being the “guest picker” went to your very own J-Dub of Dubsism and the topic is “Eastwood”-connected Movies” (movies featuring Clint or his progeny in any capacity).

The Story:

One of my favorite things in movies is when an actor plays against his “type.” By 1971, Clint Eastwood (#2 on my list of favorite actors) had become synonymous with the “Man With No Name” from films such as The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. That year’s Dirty Harry served as another example of Eastwood as another hard-ass prone to letting his trigger finger do the talking. That’s why he made this movie…he gets to play a victim.

Dave Garver (played by Clint Eastwood) is a disc jockey at Carmel, California’s jazz radio station KRML. He’s also a compulsive womanizer, which is why his fellow DJ Al Monte (played by James McEachin) razzes him for receiving yet another request from a female fan to play Erroll Garner’s jazz classic Misty.

After his shift, Dave heads for his usual hangout, a bar called The Sardine Factory which happens to be owned by his friend Murphy (played by Don Siegel…the very same who directed Dirty Harry). Being what he is, Dave spots and an attractive woman sitting at the end of the bar who will come to be known as Evelyn Draper (played by Jessica Walter). Evelyn eventually reveals she came to the bar to meet him, at which point Dave recognizes her voice as the fan who calls him every night with the request to play Misty.

Nature takes it’s course as “womanizer” meets “groupie.” As the “hook-up” is progressing, Dave warns Evelyn that he is “hung up” on another woman, but she doesn’t care. She seems to play to the sentiment by selling Dave the “no strings” mantra endemic to the world of casual sex.

But the next day as Dave is working at home with Al, they are unexpectedly interrupted by Evelyn. Al assumes Evelyn and Dave have a date, so he excuses himself. However, Dave is miffed that Evelyn has invited herself to his home. The mood changes when Dave mentions that she should call “next time.” She stays the night again.

This is the perfect time to introduce the “other woman.” This is when Dave learns that his former girl friend Tobie Williams (played by Donna Mills) is back in town. She left four months earlier seemingly ending their relationship, but there are hints of reconciliation in the air.

Things start getting dark when Dave is at The Sardine Factory having a drink when Evelyn calls looking for him. Dave gives Murphy the “I’m not here” wave-off, but later he finds her waiting in the parking lot having for him; she made the call from a nearby pay phone.

While Dave is growing increasingly concerned by Evelyn’s erratic behavior, she takes things up a notch yet again by showing up at Dave’s house, this time completely naked except for a top coat. Dave has no choice but to let her in, where she seduces him yet again. The next day as she’s leaving, she invites Dave to her house for dinner, but he gives her a non-committal “I’ll call you.”

After a few days, Evelyn angrily calls Dave for forgetting their “date.” Dave tells her their relationship is over, but Evelyn sobs that she loves him, then screams maniacally at him. Later, Evelyn calls  begging forgiveness, but Dave hangs up on her.

That only prompts a now-hysterical Evelyn to show up in the middle of the night at Dave’s house because she believes he is with Tobie. When Dave demands that she leave, Evelyn slashes her wrists. In an attempt to keep things quiet, Dave calls  his friend Dr. Frank Dewan (played by Jack Ging) to tend to Evelyn. As she has not been seriously injured, Frank reluctantly agrees not to notify the police.

ASIDE: This is the point no matter how many times you’ve seen this film you scream at the screen “JUST WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING, DAVE?” Because Evelyn overhears Frank cautioning Dave to keep her calm, she manipulates Dave with a guilt trip so he will let her stay in his house.

Obviously, this arrangement takes no time to prove problematic. When Dave tries to leave to see Tobie, Evelyn pretends to have a nightmare, making Dave feel like he has to stay with her. While Dave is discovered asleep on his couch by his maid Birdie (played by Clarice Taylor), Evelyn has taken Dave’s car into town where she secretly makes a copy of Dave’s house key.

Evelyn descends further into madness while Dave confesses his situation to Tobie. Evelyn takes advantage of Dave’s absence to enter his home. But when Birdie walks in on here, Evelyn slashes her repeatedly with a kitchen knife.

With Evelyn now supposedly out of the picture, Dave and Tobie reconcile. A few months later, Tobie mentions she will be having a roommate named Annabel. Through a series of events including her first attempt to kill Dave, he deduces that “Annabel” is in fact Evelyn.

Fearing for her safety, Dave rushes to Tobie’s home only to discover the dead body of the detective investigating Evelyn and the fact she has bound and gagged Tobie. When Dave goes to free Tobie, Evelyn Evelyn springs from the darkness with a knife slashing him repeatedly. He escapes, only to be attacked again by Evelyn, although this time he manages to land such a devastating blow to knock Evelyn over the balcony railing to her death.

The Hidden Sports Analogy:

Dave Garver’s problems took place in 1971. Much of it could have been avoided had he listened to HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyseey. After all, HAL said his peace in 1968. While that should have been timely enough for Dave, it was about 20 years too late for today’s analogy.

In the summer of 1949, the character of “Dave Garver” was played by a slick-fielding first baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies named Eddie Waitkus. That may not be a bold-font name in the annals of baseball history, but Waitkus was had an 11-year career in the bigs hitting .285…most notably striking out only 204 times in 4,681 plate appearances.

But there’s more to the Waitkus story than baseball. Despite suffering the loss of his mother at 14, Waitkus went on to become a high school honor student studying foreign languages and starred on the debate team graduating 6^th in a class of 600.

By the time Waitkus graduated, he was a legend in both baseball and academia. He was offered baseball scholarships by Harvard, Holy Cross, and Duke, but he chose the world of professional baseball instead.

But Eddie Waitkus is less remembered for his prowess on the diamond and more for an incident that occurred at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago on June 14, 1949. That was the night Waitkus crossed paths with a young, obsessed fan named Ruth Steinhagen.

There was nothing mysterious about Steinhagen, especially not after reading about Evelyn Draper; the recipe was frighteningly similar. Steinhagen had been obsessed with Waitkus going back to his days with the Chicago Cubs. According to several published reports, she constructed a shrine to Waitkus, complete with hundreds of photos and press clippings. Her mother disclosed she would set a place for Waitkus at the family dinner table.

Things took a turn when Waitkus was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies after the 1948 season. Steinhagen reportedly felt abandoned after this trade, and her infatuation became something much more menacing. When the Phillies came to Chicago to play the Cubs the following season, Steinhagen left a note for Waitkus at the team’s hotel. She signed it with the pseudonym “Ruth Anne Burns” and it was designed to lure Waitkus to room 1297A.

“It is extremely important that I see you as soon as possible. We’re not acquainted, but I have something of importance to speak to you about. I think it would be to your advantage to let me explain this to you as I am leaving the hotel the day after tomorrow. I realize this is out of the ordinary, but as I say, it is extremely important.”

Waitkus took the bait, and once in the room, Steinhagen shot him in the chest with a .22-caliber rifle. Steinhagen originally planned this encounter as a murder-suicide; her intention was to stab Waitkus and then shoot herself.

Naturally, after the shooting, Steinhagen’s story became national news. There are varying accounts of as to what happened when Waitkus entered the room, but all agree that Steinhagen failed to harm herself after shooting Waitkus.

Even though he was critically wounded, Waitkus survived the shooting and went on to become a part of the Phillies “Whiz Kids” team of 1950; the team that took the normally cellar-dweller Phillies to their first World Series appearance. As for Steinhagen, she was declared “criminally insane” and committed to Illinois’ Kankakee State Hospital.

After his recovery, Waitkus described the incident in his own words.

“I went up to my room and called her because I thought it might be someone I knew—someone from downstate or a friend of a friend. When she opened the door, she took a look and said, ‘come in for a minute.’ She was very abrupt and businesslike. I asked what she wanted and walked through the little entrance hall over to the window. When I turned around there she was with the .22 caliber rifle. She said, ‘You’re not going to bother me anymore.’ Before I could say anything else, whammy! She had the coldest looking face I ever saw. No expression at all. She wasn’t happy—she wasn’t anything. We ballplayers get a lot of letters from girls and don’t pay any attention to them. We call them ‘Baseball Annies.’”

The problem was this Annie got her gun.

The Moral of the Story:

There’s an old saying about being beware of strangers bearing gifts. I say just beware of strangers.

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P.S: The Waitkus shooting is said to have inspired Bernard Malamud to write his iconic baseball novel The Natural, which was published in 1952 and served as the basis of the 1984 Robert Redford movie by the same name.

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