When I got into radio, I asked one of the DJ’s if he had any advice for me. “Don’t get involved with a listener!” was his reply. I asked him why and his response was, “Haven’t you ever seen Play Misty for Me?”
I hadn’t. So I rented it. It starred Clint Eastwood and Jessica Walter and it scared the heck out of me!
The film came out on this day in 1971. The movie in a nutshell:
Popular radio show host Dave Garver (Clint Eastwood) becomes restless in his relationship with his girlfriend (Donna Mills). Impulsively, he goes out and sleeps with a woman (Jessica Walter) he meets at a nightclub. After the fact, he finds out she was not an anonymous hookup, but an obsessive fan who has called in repeatedly to request he play the song “Misty.” Garver soon discovers extricating himself from the woman will be no easy feat as she becomes increasingly psychotic.
In my radio career of over two decades, I thankfully never encountered a listener like this! Naturally, we were all leery of any food or drink that was brought to the radio station. You never knew what might or might not be in it.
Most DJ’s had “groupies” who followed you around to your appearances. Many just wanted to chat with you. They always treated you like you were a “big star” or “famous.” I always told them I was just a guy doing a job. Still, there were plenty of folks that followed me around or always called the station. Off the top of my head: Gary, Dawn, Ann, Dan, Marie, Jennifer, Heather, Don, Tracy, Michelle, Lee, Kortney, Shelley, Pat, Sandy, Joe, Deatta, and many more all connected with me at various stations and throughout my career. Many of them became friends afterward. None of them ever attacked me violently.
Errol Garner composed Misty in 1954. It would be recorded by many artists including Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughn, Aretha Franklin and Johnny Mathis. It would become Mathis’ signature song.
Here is the Garner version.
Various Ramblings of a Nostalgic Italian 
great writeup! I have heard of the movie (doesn’t it have ‘First time ever I saw your face’ in it?) but didn’t know what it was about. Sounds like a great plot. You have the first hand experience and what you say rings true with what I’ve seen. The local rock station in my suburb about 15-20 years ago was still , remarkably, mainly staffed with real DJs and was quite active in the community. They did a lot of live remotes and a number of regular listeners, including myself got to know most of the DJs on a first name basis. Over the years, one became a buddy I’d go out and have a beer with at times and another really tried to get his listeners to feel part of a community and hosted parties and such- great guy and many friendships were created among his listeners. But there was potential for trouble like the movie suggests. I actually thought of that and acted, believe it or not, almost like a stern father to one quite young female DJ. She was fairly pretty, did a number of live remotes, and as it happened, lived near my store and came in semi-regularly. We became casual friends and I got alarmed at how much personal info she gave out on air, like while not giving out her home address, describing her street and neighborhood well enough to narrow it down, parking the station van out front overnight, giving lots of details about her beloved little car to make it recognizable. She was trying to really build up that repoir and sense of knowing her listeners which was great but I thought she was putting herself at some real risk.
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