Dennis Day is the unlikely star in the second broadcast of this George Bamber script about a beatnik poet framed for murder. He’s called “Tennis Shoe,” and is a hitch-hiker. Day is certainly unlikely casting and does well in the part but his portrayal makes the character sound less youthful than one would expect. The story is one of the Suspense series most polarizing in terms of fan reaction, and the casting of Day is considered by some who do not like the script as rather “unserious” rather than creative. Robson obviously liked the script enough to repeat it and thought Day would do well, and spur some extra publicity for the broadcast.
The first broadcast of this script was on 1958-05-25 and starred Elliott Reid. Details about the episode and the interesting careers of George Bamber can be found at
https://suspenseproject.blogspot.com/2025/05/1958-05-25-like-man-somebody-dig-me.html
https://archive.org/details/TSP580525 is where recordings can be downloaded and streamed.
The program was pre-recorded, but no script is available to reference those details.
There are two surviving Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS) recordings, with both in excellent sound. The recordings can be differentiated by the announcements after the Robson monologue:
AFRTS#1039: Joe and Daphne Forsythe skit about US Savings Bonds
AFRS#unknown: History of Delaware
The recording with the “history of Delaware,” the AFRS recording with the currently unknown number, is the slightly better of the two.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP590816
THE CAST
DENNIS DAY (“Tennis Shoe”), Lillian Buyeff (Mary / Old Woman), Bill Quinn (Walter / George), Jack Moyles (Radio voice / Sheriff), Paul Frees (“The Cat” / Bronson / Mortician), Charles Seel (Old Timer), George Walsh (Narrator)
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