When They Were Making It
Patrick Rankin
The real human stories behind classic Hollywood's greatest films and legends. 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 go beyond the legend to explore 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...
Episodes
Shirley Temple: Hollywood's Most Famous Child Star — Depression-Era Stardom, the Studio System, and an Extraordinary Second Act
Shirley Temple was the most famous child star Hollywood had ever seen — a six-year-old who became the biggest box-office...
Dorothy Dandridge, Part 2: Hollywood's First Black Leading Lady — Island in the Sun, Porgy and Bess, and the Promise Hollywood Couldn't Keep
By 1955, Dorothy Dandridge had done what Hollywood once seemed determined to make impossible — become a genuine leading ...
Dorothy Dandridge, Part 1: A Star of Her Own Making — Baptism by Show Business, Carmen Jones, and a Historic Oscar Nomination
Dorothy Dandridge was one of the most electrifying talents Hollywood ever tried to contain — a trailblazing performer wh...
Sunset Boulevard (1950): Hollywood's Autopsy — Billy Wilder, Gloria Swanson, and the Film That Shook an Industry
In 1949, Billy Wilder sat inside a theatre in Evanston, Illinois, and watched his new film, Sunset Boulevard, fall apart...
Mae West: The Most Dangerous Woman in Hollywood — Sex, Censorship, and the Star Who Redefined the Movies
Mae West shook up Depression-era Hollywood with a persona unlike anything American audiences had seen before — sexually ...
Marlon Brando, Part 3: The Final Act — The Godfather, Last Tango in Paris, Apocalypse Now, and the Death of a Legend
By 1970, Hollywood had decided Marlon Brando was finished.He had gone more than a decade without a major hit. His films ...
Marlon Brando, Part 2: The Wilderness Years — Guys and Dolls, Mutiny on the Bounty, and the Road to The Godfather
By the end of the 1950s, Marlon Brando had everything he had spent his career fighting for. An Oscar. Money. Power. His ...
Marlon Brando, Part 1: The Early Years — A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, and the Oscar That Changed Everything
On December 3, 1947, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York, a twenty-three-year-old actor in a torn T-shirt walked ...
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 knif...
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 prostit...
16 episodes · Page 1 / 2
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