As a child, in my house, I remember this program was a must watch. The people I watched it with are long gone. Don’t remember a great deal from my childhood, which is probably a good thing, but for some reason this program sticks out. In an effort to get a feel for the people I grew up with, I would appreciate any thoughts you may have on this series.
I remember watching it though I don’t remember any specific shows. It seemed pretty cool at the time, I would imagine it would make me cringe now, but who knows.
It’s off to IMDb to see who was in it and what became of them.
You can watch an episode on archive.org:
He (to me) looks and sounds remarkably like the late Phil Hartman of SNL and Newsradio.
Thank you. I am aware there are episodes online. But I just wanted to know how people perceived this series. To better understand the people who raised me. What kind of people would watch this series? Intellectuals, right wingers, left wingers. I understand that each program had the endorsement of J. Edgar Hoover, so they probably weren’t too cerebral. Just wanted to know who and why they watched this series.
Welcome to the SDMB, harmonicamoon. This discussion belongs in our forum devoted to the arts, Cafe Society. I’ll move it thither for you.
twickster, MPSIMS moderator
But did you leave a link to it yon?
Never mind. There must have been low flying jet just overhead.
I remember it – the premise, not individual episodes – and without looking it up I remember that Richard Carlson played the lead. And yeah, he and Phil Hartmann looked a bit alike.
My family watched, in the same way that most families watched TV in the days when there were three channels and no remote control. You watched what came on after the last show you watched, unless you had kids who could be asked to change the channel. And maybe adjust the antenna. 
The show was popular, but this was during the Red Scare times, so there may have been an attendant feeling that you were doing something about the Red Menace by watching. Could be my parents thought it was our patriotic duty.
What I remember (much more than the show itself) was my father’s habit of saying “watch your step, Philbrick” whenever he was about to try to fix something around the house.
But if anyone wants to talk about other old Ziv productions, I’m up for Highway Patrol!
Gracias twickster! I was thinking Cafe Society was for food. Now I know it is arts. Thanks for the welcome.
I remember this series very well, although since I see from IMDB that it played from the time I was 4 until I was 7, maybe I saw it in re-runs or syndication (did they have syndication back then?).
I remember that we took it for granted that the communists were a horrible threat to America, and that it was based on a true story. Philbrick was played as kind of an everyman, I think, but also as a real hero.
Roddy
I remember that Richard Carlson played the role of Herbert Philbrick who was a real person who wrote a book on which the series was based. I remember two specific things about it (don’t know if memory is accurate.) One of the F.B.I. agents was a former Pittsburgh Pirate infielder, who judging by his career batting average could still play there, Johnny Beradino. And the second, it seems like Philbrick was forever going up to his attic to get messages over his spy radio. I don’t remember anything political, but I was only 10 or so, it was just seemingly taken for granted that Communists were our enemy. Who knew why?
Thanks for the link-great look back at 1950’s paranoia. I have a personal connection with the series-Herb Philbrick owned an ran a lobster restaurant in Hampton Beach, NH-the “Rocky Bend”. My mother’s aunt owned a small hotel nearby-she saw and talked to him frequently. What I found fascinating was Philbrick travelling around to all those Commie cell meetings-how did he have time to do anything else. Did all these cells actually exist? The old USA Communist party seemed to be a conglomeration of nuts, idealists, and all round weirdos-was it ever all that big?
Only in the mind of Joe McCarthy.
Thank you for that link! I’d heard of the show, but never seen it, as it was slightly before my time. I love it!
“Within the past three months, publicly available information from a half-dozen plants … has turned up in Moscow.”
In the '50s, did everyone park their car at the curb and then get out the passenger side?
Regarding harmonicamoon’s quest, though, I think the answer is as simple as AuntiePam said. All you can tell for sure about the people who watched this show, or any show back then, is that they considered it good enough compared to the one or two other things that were available that walking over to change the channel wasn’t worth the effort. Heck, depending on where you grew up, there may have been only one channel to watch.
It’s possible your folks were ardent anti-Communists who considered it their patriotic duty to watch every week. It’s possible they were lefties who were laughing at the idea that Communist infiltration of American society was so thorough and organized. It’s possible they were just ordinary schmoes who thought Richard Carlson was a good actor.
Sorry.
It is also worth mentioning that while the FBI was watching the CPUSA, JE Hoover was denying the existence of organized crime-up until 1957 (the Apalachin incident), he said there was no such thing as the Mafia.
Apalachin changed that.
Tailing commies was probably a great job for an FBI agent-you got to recruit guys like Philbrick, and had a nice expense account… I reacll a joke (basic training for FBI agents)…the opening address for a communist party cell meeting “Comrades and members of the FBI…”
Talking about actual communists is beside the point when talking about McCarthyism, or any Red scare. They’re meant to stem the influence of the moderate left - the sector that has the most chance of bringing about massive change.
By 1950, the GOP had been out of power since 1932 and things showed no signs of changing. McCarthy came along at just the right time to exploit the weakness of New Deal Democrats: that a lot of them had had associations, usually vague ones, with radicals during the depression years.
I remember watching it and being sort of turned off. I was very young and I wanted very much to dislike the people he was catching, tricking or whatever because they were bad. I wanted them to be monsters. But they were people and often people who had trusted him. That seemed wrong some how. I wanted him to be heroic. Instead I found him a little sleazy.