New PBS documentary on Joseph McCarthy shows a 'regular guy' who 'fought dirty'

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

She grew up in Singapore, and went to school in London and Ann Arbor, Michigan, but Sharon Grimberg and her work are developing a Wisconsin accent.

In more than 20 years as a documentary film producer — including 15 years as a staff producer for PBS' "American Experience," with Emmy-winning executive producer (and Shawano native) Mark Samels — Grimberg has come back to Wisconsin several times.

One of her three Emmys is for "Two Days in October," an "American Experience" installment focusing on a bloody battle in Vietnam and an antiwar protest at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, both in October 1967. In 2018, she produced "The Circus," with a focus on Ringling Bros. in Baraboo.

And she's kicking off 2020 with another Wisconsin-connected project on "American Experience." "McCarthy" chronicles the unlikely rise and swift fall of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin Republican whose anti-communist campaign made him, for a few years in the 1950s, one of the most powerful men in America. And one of the most reviled.

Sen. Joseph McCarthy speaks with reporters at La Guardia Airport in New York City shortly after his victory over Len Schmitt in the 1952 Wisconsin Republican primary.

The new documentary airs at 8 p.m. Monday on PBS outlets, including WMVS-TV (Channel 10) in Milwaukee.

"It's actually totally coincidental — just luck, I think," Grimberg said about her Wisconsin focus of late. "The circus film was … completely Mark's (Samels) idea."

"McCarthy," however, was hers.

Grimberg started looking at making a movie about "Wisconsin's junior senator," as newsman Edward R. Murrow regularly referred to McCarthy, in 2003. That year, the U.S. Senate released the transcripts of the executive sessions of what came to be known as the Army-McCarthy hearings, yielding a never-before-seen glimpse of the proceedings from behind the scenes.

The people behind the "American Experience" documentary "McCartthy" face TV journalists at the Television Critics Association press tour in Beverly Hills, California, this summer. From left: Series senior producer Susan Bellows; David M. Oshinsky, author of "A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy"; Jelani Cobb, New Yorker staff writer and Columbia University journalism professor; and Sharon Grimberg, writer, director and producer of "McCarthy." The documentary airs on PBS Jan. 6, 2020.

The project went on the back burner for a decade or so, until Grimberg came back to it in 2016.

"McCarthy," based in part on David M. Oshinsky's book "A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy," focuses on 1950-'54, the years when McCarthy held the spotlight, by claiming there were hundreds of communists in federal government and then a series of investigations into alleged communist influence in American society.

But the documentary also gives due to the Wisconsin roots of McCarthy's unlikely political career, from his grass-roots campaign style to his willingness to take on the establishment.

Some observers have seen parallels between McCarthy's style and politics in the age of Donald Trump. But Grimberg said that's just a coincidence, too.

Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy, right, and Maryland Sen. Millard Tydings face off on the first day of hearings into McCarthy’s allegations that scores of communists were working in the State Department.

"It's history playing funny games with my production," Grimberg said. "There was no intention to release this film (specifically) at this juncture."

But there were other parallels between McCarthy's time and ours, she acknowledged.

"One of the things that sticks with me is that the country was very polarized in the 1950s, and people were kind of stuck in their opinions in a way," she said. Even though McCarthy's image and popularity took a hit after Army-McCarthy hearings — which, on national television, showed the junior senator as bombastic and even rude — 30% of the country still approved of his behavior.

"There's been a historical story that McCarthy had a rise and fall, but even in the fall of 1954 and 1955 (after he was condemned by the Senate for his actions), he had people who approved of him," she said.

The thing about McCarthy, Grimberg said, was that he liked a battle, but he treated his political fights like they were the boxing matches he fought in when he was younger.

"He was a regular guy, but he fought dirty. But he thought that you fought in the ring, and then you shook hands," Grimberg said. "He'd fight, and then it was over."

More interested in headlines than policy, McCarthy gets more blame — or credit, depending on your perspective — for the anti-communist hysteria that fueled his rise to notoriety than he deserves, she said.

"He didn't create the Red Scare, but he exploited it," Grimberg said.

Contact Chris Foran at chris.foran@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @cforan12 .