After the war, he began working on Broadway, acting on stage during the late 1940s and most of the 1950s. He started to appear on television in the early fifties, shortly followed by film. Parfrey soon became one of the most interesting character actors to appear on American televison and film in the 1960s, bringing a quirky charisma to every character that he played, from shopkeepers to space-age simians. His noted turn as the unbalanced informer in Broadway's Advise and Consent (1961) set the standard for his offbeat, conspiratorial persona in dozens of TV and movie appearances into the 1980s.