When They Were Making It

Patrick Rankin
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  • Filmhistoria
  • Varje vecka

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.

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  1. −2 d

    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. WTWMI is written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Rankin. Original artwork by Simone Beech and original music by Lionel Ziblat. New episodes of WTWMI drop every Tuesday. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

    1 tim 53 min

  2. 9 juni

    Marilyn Monroe, Part 3: JFK, a Hollywood Comeback, and the Last Summer — The Fight, the Mystery, and the End 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, 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. 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. WTWMI is written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Rankin. Original artwork by Simone Beech and original music by Lionel Ziblat. Parts 1 and 2 of our three-part series on Marilyn Monroe are available now.  New episodes of WTWMI drop every Tuesday. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

    1 tim 27 min

  3. 8 juni

    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. Rudolph Valentino. Marlon Brando. Anna May Wong. Alfred Hitchcock. Audrey Hepburn. The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy Dandridge. Charlie Chaplin. Casablanca. Grace Kelly. Bette Davis. Lana Turner. Gone with the Wind. Clara Bow. Citizen Kane. 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, hosted, and produced by Patrick Rankin. Original cover art by Simone Beech. Original music by Lionel Ziblat.  New episodes every Tuesday. Follow now wherever you get your podcasts.

    2 min

  4. 2 juni

    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. WTWMI is written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Rankin. Original artwork by Simone Beech and original music by Lionel Ziblat.  Part 3 releases Tuesday, June 9. Part 1 is available now.  New episodes of WTWMI drop every Tuesday. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

    1 tim 16 min

  5. 26 maj

    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. WTWMI is written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Rankin. Original artwork by Simone Beech and original music by Lionel Ziblat.  Part 2 drops June 2, 2026 — the day after her centennial. Part 3 releases Tuesday, June 9.  New episodes of WTWMI drop every Tuesday. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

    1 tim 49 min

  6. 13 maj

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

    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. Hosted, written, and produced by Patrick Rankin. Artwork by Simone Beech and original music by Lionel Ziblat. New episodes of WTWMI drop every Tuesday. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

    2 min

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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

  • Skapad av
    Patrick Rankin
  • Aktiva år
    2 tn
  • Avsnitt
    6
  • Åldersgräns
    Barnvänligt
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Patrick Rankin
  • Programmets webbplats
    When They Were Making It

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