When They Were Making It

Patrick Rankin
  • 4.8 (110)
  • Film History
  • Updated Weekly

Marilyn Monroe. Casablanca. Audrey Hepburn. The Wizard of Oz. Charlie Chaplin. Breakfast at Tiffany's. Alfred Hitchcock. Sunset Boulevard. What do they all have in common? They had to make it first. Each week we bring you the untold human stories behind classic Hollywood's biggest icons and most beloved films. Not the myths. Not the takedowns. The whole human story. From the silent era to the early 1960s — the people, the films, and the impossible work of becoming a legend. WTWMI is written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Rankin. Original artwork by Simone Beech and original music by Lionel Ziblat. A new chapter every Tuesday. Follow along wherever you get your podcasts.

Episodes

  1. 5h ago

    Lana Turner: The Sweater Girl Who Became MGM's Most Glamorous Star — Scandal, Survival, and a Very Hollywood Murder

    On Good Friday, 1958, a man lay dead on a pink bedroom floor in Beverly Hills — a severed aorta, almost no blood, a knife with no fingerprints in the bathroom sink, and the most famous actress in America asking the police chief if she could take the blame. By the time he arrived, the story of what happened that night had already been written. Before she became Hollywood's "Sweater Girl" — before she was the platinum blonde MGM built in a dead woman's image — Lana Turner was Julia Jean Turner, a bootlegger's daughter from a mining town in Idaho, raised on instability and crackers and milk, shaped by a father murdered in an alley over his gambling winnings when she was nine. This episode traces her invention, her rise, and the price of being a fantasy the studio designed down to the last detail — from a soda fountain Coca-Cola to a personal contract at sixteen, from a seventy-five-foot tracking shot in a tight sweater to the platinum hair and the new name and the slot left open by Jean Harlow's death. It follows her through the breakthrough of Ziegfeld Girl, the role that finally proved she could act in The Postman Always Rings Twice, the suspensions and the slide, and the improbable comeback of Peyton Place — an Oscar nomination for a woman everyone in the industry had written off. It also follows the private life the studio fought to contain. The marriages — seven of them, eight ceremonies — to a bandleader who wanted to belittle her, a "tobacco heir" who turned out to run a cigar store, and the man she'd call the love of her life, who she lost to a telegram and a coward's silence. The pregnancies the studio ended without anesthesia and billed to her paycheck. The Tarzan who abused her daughter under her own roof for three years. And finally Johnny Stompanato — the mob-connected enforcer in Mickey Cohen's world, the man she couldn’t leave, the violence she couldn’t hide, and the fourteen-year-old who ended it with an eight-inch carving knife This is the story of a girl who spent her whole life searching for something that would stay — built into the most looked-at woman in America by a machine that owned her face, her name, and her past, and who survived nearly all of it. Because Lana Turner was never just the murder, or the scandals, or the seven husbands. She was a genuine movie star in the oldest sense of the word — a face that defined an era and never quite left it. Decades after her death, a singer named Elizabeth Grant went looking for a name that sounded like old Hollywood glamour and faded film-reel romance, and found it in her: Lana Del Rey. The Sweater Girl is still out there, still shaping what we mean when we say "movie star." — When They Were Making It is written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Rankin. Original artwork by Simone Beech and original music by Lionel Ziblat. Join WTWMI: The Backlot — our Patreon — for exclusive extras including mini and full-length bonus episodes, episode companion pieces, and behind-the-scenes materials at https://www.patreon.com/WhenTheyWereMakingIt. For episode information, show notes, upcoming episodes, and more, visit whentheyweremakingit.com. Follow WTWMI on Instagram and TikTok: @whentheyweremakingit. On Instagram, we share visual companion pieces for every episode, bringing the images, people, places, and atmosphere behind the story to life. New episodes of When They Were Making It drop every Tuesday. Follow now wherever you get your podcasts.

    1h 41m

  2. Jun 23

    Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961): How Hollywood Rewrote Holly Golightly — Audrey Hepburn, Truman Capote, and the Making of a Style Icon

    By 1958, Truman Capote had written something he knew would cause trouble. A heroine who danced along the edge of prostitution. An ending that refused resolution. A character built from abandonment, reinvention, and survival — and designed, deliberately, to resist being saved. Harper's Bazaar bought the novella and then refused to publish it. Esquire ran it without changes. And when Hollywood came calling, Capote allowed himself to believe the right people might understand what he'd made. They didn't. This episode traces how Breakfast at Tiffany's got made — and what it cost to get there. It follows the first screenwriter fired for staying too close to Capote's vision, and George Axelrod's systematic dismantling of everything that made Holly dangerous — transforming her from wounded survivor into lovable eccentric, and writing the happy ending Capote never gave her. It traces the casting: Marilyn Monroe, Capote's own choice, rejected by her own team. Shirley MacLaine, Kim Novak, and Joanne Woodward all passing. And finally Audrey Hepburn — who made no creative sense and every strategic one, whose presence alone declared what kind of film this would be. The firing of director John Frankenheimer, who used his free time to make The Manchurian Candidate. And the hiring of Blake Edwards, who flew to Switzerland and told Hepburn's team exactly what they needed to hear. It follows the production: the dawn shoot on Fifth Avenue with forty armed guards and Tiffany's open on a Sunday for the first time in recent history. The six-day party sequence filmed on real champagne. The war between Edwards and George Peppard that nearly came to blows on set. Mickey Rooney in yellowface. And a fire escape, a guitar, and a small uncertain voice singing three notes that a composer had written in thirty minutes — the one unguarded moment that survived everything. And then the battle to keep it. A preview screening, a studio executive, and a demand that Moon River be cut from the film entirely. The confrontation that followed. And the song that stayed. Breakfast at Tiffany's became one of 1961's biggest commercial successes, earned five Academy Award nominations, and sent Truman Capote into a fury he carried for the rest of his life. It also became something no one involved could have predicted: not a film exactly, but an image — a black dress, a cigarette holder, a window full of diamonds — more famous than the story it came from, and more enduring than almost anyone who made it. What Hollywood did to Holly Golightly was exactly what Capote feared. What it created was something else entirely. — When They Were Making It is written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Rankin. Original artwork by Simone Beech and original music by Lionel Ziblat. Join WTWMI: The Backlot — our Patreon — for exclusive extras including mini and full-length bonus episodes, episode companion pieces, and behind-the-scenes materials at https://www.patreon.com/WhenTheyWereMakingIt. For episode information, show notes, upcoming episodes, and more, visit whentheyweremakingit.com. Follow WTWMI on Instagram and TikTok: @whentheyweremakingit. On Instagram, we share visual companion pieces for every episode, bringing the images, people, places, and atmosphere behind the story to life. New episodes of When They Were Making It drop every Tuesday. Follow now wherever you get your podcasts.

    1h 29m

  3. Jun 16

    Rudolph Valentino: Hollywood's First Sex Symbol — Desire, Masculinity, and the Myth That Outlived the Man

    In August 1926, a man in black lay inside a New York funeral home while a hundred thousand people rioted in the streets to get closer. Windows shattered. Police charged the crowd on horseback. There were reports of suicides.  None of them had ever met him. They had only ever known the image — and the image, it turned out, was immortal in a way the man never got to be. Before he became the most famous face in the world — before he made America question what it meant to be a man — Rudolph Valentino was Rodolfo Guglielmi, an Italian immigrant scraping by on dimes as a taxi dancer in New York, one scandal away from sailing home in defeat. This episode traces his invention, his rise, and the cost of becoming a fantasy that had no room for the real person inside it — from a sun-bleached hill town in southern Italy to the dance halls of Manhattan, from a forgettable string of villain roles to The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the tango that made women feel something they weren't supposed to want. It follows him through The Sheik, the film that rewrote the vocabulary of American flirtation and turned him into something the country had never seen and couldn't quite name. It traces the strike that froze him out of the industry he'd conquered, the bigamy arrest, and the years he spent fighting to prove he was more than the Latin Lover — only to watch audiences reject every attempt and demand the fantasy back. It also follows the private man behind the smolder. Natacha Rambova — the brilliant, uncompromising artist he loved, married twice, and ultimately gave up to save his career.  June Mathis, the woman who saw a star where everyone else saw a villain, and who would be there at the beginning, the middle, and — long after his death — the end. And the national campaign to destroy him: the whispers of effeminacy, the "Pink Powder Puff" attack, and the men who never stopped swinging at a kind of masculinity they couldn't understand. And finally, August 23, 1926. A perforated ulcer, a shocking turn, and a death at thirty-one that the world turned into something stranger than grief. The crypt he was never meant to stay in, and the mysterious Lady in Black who never let him be forgotten. A myth that strangers have been painting their dreams onto for a hundred years. This is the story of the first male sex symbol — the man who proved desire could sell tickets, who let the camera linger on him, and who invented a template Hollywood has relied on ever since. A man who got everything he ever wanted, and discovered it wasn't enough. — When They Were Making It is written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Rankin. Original artwork by Simone Beech and original music by Lionel Ziblat. Join WTWMI: The Backlot — our Patreon — for exclusive extras including mini and full-length bonus episodes, episode companion pieces, and behind-the-scenes materials at https://www.patreon.com/WhenTheyWereMakingIt. For episode information, show notes, upcoming episodes, and more, visit whentheyweremakingit.com. Follow WTWMI on Instagram and TikTok: @whentheyweremakingit. On Instagram, we share visual companion pieces for every episode, bringing the images, people, places, and atmosphere behind the story to life. New episodes of When They Were Making It drop every Tuesday. Follow now wherever you get your podcasts.

    1h 52m

  4. Jun 9

    Marilyn Monroe, Part 3: JFK, a Hollywood Comeback, and the Last Summer — The Fight, the Mystery, and the Death of an Icon

    This is Part 3 of our three-part series on Marilyn Monroe — marking her centennial on June 1, 2026, what would have been her 100th birthday. By January 1961, Marilyn Monroe had lost almost everything. Her marriage to playwright Arthur Miller was over. Her latest film The Misfits had flopped. Clark Gable was dead. And somewhere in New York, behind drawn curtains, the most famous woman in the world was alone. What came next was the last chapter. And the one that still has the world asking questions. Part 3 traces the final eighteen months of Marilyn Monroe's life: the institutionalization she didn't see coming, the man who got her out, and the psychiatrist who moved into the center of everything. It follows her back to Los Angeles — to the first home she ever owned, to a new film, Something's Got to Give, and to one more fight with Fox. It covers the photo sessions that became her most iconic images, the interview in which she finally said everything she'd always wanted to say, and the night at Madison Square Garden when she sang Happy Birthday to the President of the United States in a dress sewn onto her body. It also follows what the public couldn't see. The ground giving way beneath the comeback. The doctors who were supposed to be keeping her safe. The last day — unremarkable for most of its hours — and what happened after. And finally, the goodbye — and a woman gone too soon.  August 4, 1962. Marilyn Monroe's death. The questions that have never fully gone away. The autopsy. The timeline that didn't quite add up. The investigation that closed the case — and the reason the case has never quite felt closed. This is the end of the story. And the reason it's never really ended. Parts 1 and 2 of our three-part series on Marilyn Monroe are available now.  — When They Were Making It is written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Rankin. Original artwork by Simone Beech and original music by Lionel Ziblat. Join WTWMI: The Backlot — our Patreon — for exclusive extras including mini and full-length bonus episodes, episode companion pieces, and behind-the-scenes materials at https://www.patreon.com/WhenTheyWereMakingIt. For episode information, show notes, upcoming episodes, and more, visit whentheyweremakingit.com. Follow WTWMI on Instagram and TikTok: @whentheyweremakingit. On Instagram, we share visual companion pieces for every episode, bringing the images, people, places, and atmosphere behind the story to life. New episodes of When They Were Making It drop every Tuesday. Follow now wherever you get your podcasts.

    1h 27m

  5. Jun 8

    Trailer — This Season on WTWMI

    This season on When They Were Making It — Marilyn is just the beginning. The stars. The classics. The faces history almost forgot.  Elizabeth Taylor. Casablanca. Rudolph Valentino. The Wizard of Oz. Marlon Brando. Anna May Wong. Breakfast at Tiffany's. Alfred Hitchcock. Audrey Hepburn. Gone with the Wind. Dorothy Dandridge. Charlie Chaplin. Singin' in the Rain. Grace Kelly. Bette Davis. Citizen Kane. Lana Turner. Clara Bow. Mary Pickford. James Dean. Greta Garbo. Judy Garland. And so many more. The lives underneath the legends. Each one a story all its own. — When They Were Making It is written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Rankin. Original artwork by Simone Beech and original music by Lionel Ziblat. Join WTWMI: The Backlot — our Patreon — for exclusive extras including mini and full-length bonus episodes, episode companion pieces, and behind-the-scenes materials at https://www.patreon.com/WhenTheyWereMakingIt. For episode information, show notes, upcoming episodes, and more, visit whentheyweremakingit.com. Follow WTWMI on Instagram and TikTok: @whentheyweremakingit. On Instagram, we share visual companion pieces for every episode, bringing the images, people, places, and atmosphere behind the story to life. New episodes of When They Were Making It drop every Tuesday. Follow now wherever you get your podcasts.

    2 min

  6. Jun 2

    Marilyn Monroe, Part 2: The Playwright, the Prince, and the Misfits — Fame, Control, and the Long Collapse

    This is Part 2 of our three-part series on Marilyn Monroe — marking her centennial on June 1, 2026, what would have been her 100th birthday. By 1956, Marilyn Monroe had everything she'd fought for. Her own production company. The most unprecedented studio contract any actress had ever signed. The most respected playwright in America at her side. And the chance, for the first time, to be happy. It would take less than two years for it all to begin falling apart. Part 2 of our three-part series on Marilyn Monroe traces what came after she'd arrived — the films that proved every critic wrong, the marriage that broke her open, and the long slow collapse that no amount of success could outpace. It follows her through The Prince and the Showgirl opposite Laurence Olivier, the grueling production of Some Like It Hot, the script of Breakfast at Tiffany's before it went to Audrey Hepburn, and The Misfits — Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift, John Huston, and the screenplay her husband wrote as a valentine and finished as a goodbye. And her tumultuous relationship with Fox — and with an industry that could never quite decide what she was allowed to be. It also follows the personal collapses — the ones the public saw and the ones it didn't. The children she wanted more than anything, and the pregnancies that ended in heartbreak. The marriage to Arthur Miller, the man she believed finally saw her for who she really was — and the quiet, devastating realization that he didn't. And the pills that, year by year, took more and more of her. This is the story of what fame takes from the women it makes — and of an actress who, even as everything fell apart around her, was still fighting to be seen for who she actually was. Part 3 releases Tuesday, June 9. Part 1 is available now.  — When They Were Making It is written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Rankin. Original artwork by Simone Beech and original music by Lionel Ziblat. Join WTWMI: The Backlot — our Patreon — for exclusive extras including mini and full-length bonus episodes, episode companion pieces, and behind-the-scenes materials at https://www.patreon.com/WhenTheyWereMakingIt. For episode information, show notes, upcoming episodes, and more, visit whentheyweremakingit.com. Follow WTWMI on Instagram and TikTok: @whentheyweremakingit. On Instagram, we share visual companion pieces for every episode, bringing the images, people, places, and atmosphere behind the story to life. New episodes of When They Were Making It drop every Tuesday. Follow now wherever you get your podcasts.

    1h 16m

  7. May 26

    Marilyn Monroe, Part 1: From Norma Jeane to Marilyn — Ambition, the Studio System, and the Birth of a Blonde Icon

    This is Part 1 of our three-part series on Marilyn Monroe — marking her centennial on June 1, 2026, what would have been her 100th birthday. On September 15, 1954, on the corner of New York's Lexington and 52nd, a wind machine lifted a white pleated dress — and Marilyn Monroe, already the most famous woman in America, became something more. An icon. Before she became Marilyn Monroe, she was Norma Jeane Mortenson — born in the charity ward of Los Angeles County Hospital to a mother who would be committed before her daughter turned eight. A childhood divided between foster homes and an orphanage. A sixteenth-birthday marriage to escape the system. And a wartime factory job that would change everything. Part 1 of our three-part series on Marilyn Monroe traces her invention, her rise, and her fight to be known as more than a blonde bombshell — from Norma Jeane to Marilyn, from Radioplane assembly line to Twentieth Century Fox marquee, from a nude calendar shoot to her hand-prints in cement at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. It follows her through a childhood of impermanence, an early marriage destined for failure, and a modeling career that opened the door to Hollywood. It traces her early years at Fox, the breakthroughs in The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve, and the year that made her a household name — Niagara, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and How to Marry a Millionaire. And the fight for legitimacy that took her out of Hollywood entirely — Marilyn Monroe in dark glasses and a headscarf, slipping into New York to build her own production company, study at the Actors Studio with Lee Strasberg, and earn the review she'd spent a decade fighting for: "Marilyn acts." It also follows the personal life she fought to hold onto. The agent who loved her, made her a star, and died before he could see what she'd become. Her relationship with baseball great Joe DiMaggio — the honeymoon that turned, and the marriage that broke. Her marriage to playwright Arthur Miller — and the brief, hopeful moment when it seemed like she might actually be able to have it all. And beneath it all, the quiet unraveling that had already begun — the pills, the depression, the loneliness behind the brightest smile in America. This is a story of strength, ambition, and self-invention: how a girl who shouldn't have had a chance made herself into the most famous woman in the world — and the price she would pay for becoming her. Part 2 drops June 2, 2026 — the day after her centennial. Part 3 releases Tuesday, June 9.  — When They Were Making It is written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Rankin. Original artwork by Simone Beech and original music by Lionel Ziblat. Join WTWMI: The Backlot — our Patreon — for exclusive extras including mini and full-length bonus episodes, episode companion pieces, and behind-the-scenes materials at https://www.patreon.com/WhenTheyWereMakingIt. For episode information, show notes, upcoming episodes, and more, visit whentheyweremakingit.com. Follow WTWMI on Instagram and TikTok: @whentheyweremakingit. On Instagram, we share visual companion pieces for every episode, bringing the images, people, places, and atmosphere behind the story to life. New episodes of When They Were Making It drop every Tuesday. Follow now wherever you get your podcasts.

    1h 49m

  8. May 13

    Launch Trailer — When They Were Making It (WTWMI): A Classic Film Podcast

    Marilyn Monroe. Breakfast at Tiffany's. Rudolph Valentino. Casablanca. Anna May Wong. Gone with the Wind. Sidney Poitier. The Wizard of Oz. Audrey Hepburn. Singin' in the Rain. Alfred Hitchcock. The stars you think you know. The films that became legends. The people the world almost forgot. When They Were Making It — a narrative documentary podcast about classic Hollywood's greatest icons, from the silent era to the early 1960s. Not the myths. Not the takedowns. The whole human story of the glamour, the ambition, the machinery, and the damage behind the icons. WTWMI premiered May 26, 2026 with Marilyn Monroe (Part 1). Part 2 dropped June 2 — the day after what would have been her 100th birthday. — When They Were Making It is written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Rankin. Original artwork by Simone Beech and original music by Lionel Ziblat. Join WTWMI: The Backlot — our Patreon — for exclusive extras including mini and full-length bonus episodes, episode companion pieces, and behind-the-scenes materials at https://www.patreon.com/WhenTheyWereMakingIt. For episode information, show notes, upcoming episodes, and more, visit whentheyweremakingit.com. Follow WTWMI on Instagram and TikTok: @whentheyweremakingit. On Instagram, we share visual companion pieces for every episode, bringing the images, people, places, and atmosphere behind the story to life. New episodes of When They Were Making It drop every Tuesday. Follow now wherever you get your podcasts.

    2 min

Trailers

4.8
out of 5
110 Ratings

About

Marilyn Monroe. Casablanca. Audrey Hepburn. The Wizard of Oz. Charlie Chaplin. Breakfast at Tiffany's. Alfred Hitchcock. Sunset Boulevard. What do they all have in common? They had to make it first. Each week we bring you the untold human stories behind classic Hollywood's biggest icons and most beloved films. Not the myths. Not the takedowns. The whole human story. From the silent era to the early 1960s — the people, the films, and the impossible work of becoming a legend. WTWMI is written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Rankin. Original artwork by Simone Beech and original music by Lionel Ziblat. A new chapter every Tuesday. Follow along wherever you get your podcasts.

Information

  • Creator
    Patrick Rankin
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    8
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Patrick Rankin
  • Show Website
    When They Were Making It

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