When They Were Making It

With Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock bet his own money on a low-budget shocker — and changed Hollywood forever. What followed would bring some of his biggest hits, his most troubling partnership, and a final chapter like no other.Concluding our October Halloween series, this is Part 3 of our three-part look at the life of Alfred Hitchcock.When plans for a new thriller starring Audrey Hepburn fell through, Hitchcock turned to something radically different. Working with a modest budget and much of his television crew, he transformed Psycho into a sensation. Janet Leigh's famous shower scene shocked audiences, while an unprecedented publicity campaign helped make it the most profitable film of his career. With greater independence than ever before, Hitchcock began planning a return to the screen for Grace Kelly in Marnie, while moving ahead with his next major production, The Birds. For its leading lady, Hitchcock chose an unknown model named Tippi Hedren, whom he hoped to turn into a major Hollywood star. But their partnership, which continued with Marnie, would end in bitter conflict. Years later, Hedren's allegations of sexual harassment and assault would raise lasting questions about the man behind the camera.Meanwhile, Hollywood was changing around Hitchcock. As a new generation of filmmakers began pushing the boundaries of cinema, he struggled to find his place. His longtime partnership with composer Bernard Herrmann came to an end during Torn Curtain, and the failure of Topaz left his career at a crossroads. A return to Britain, however, would bring a late-career comeback with Frenzy, followed by his final film, Family Plot.From his final years alongside wife, Alma Reville, to his death in 1980 and the reassessment of his work in the decades that followed, this concluding chapter explores the life and complicated legacy of Alfred Hitchcock — the Master of Suspense.—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. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Before he became the Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock had to start somewhere. He started in a British film industry struggling to survive — and in a fight for control that would carry him all the way to Hollywood.Continuing our October Halloween series, this is Part 1 of our three-part look at the life of Alfred Hitchcock.Over half a century, Alfred Hitchcock perfected the art of suspense, becoming one of the most celebrated filmmakers who ever lived and earning a title that still belongs to him and him alone: the Master of Suspense.But before he got there, before Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Psycho, he had to break free of a small, strictly ordered world, find his way into pictures, and turn his own fears into something he could use.This episode follows Hitchcock from his 1899 birth in Leytonstone to his first job in pictures, designing title cards for silent films at a London studio, where he met Alma Reville — the editor who would become his wife and lifelong collaborator. From there, he became one of Britain's leading filmmakers through The Lodger, Blackmail, The 39 Steps, and The Lady Vanishes.In 1939, David O. Selznick brought Hitchcock to Hollywood. His first American film, Rebecca, became an Oscar-winning hit — but its making also introduced him to a producer determined to control every detail. Over the next decade, as Selznick loaned him to other studios, Hitchcock directed Foreign Correspondent, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Suspicion, Shadow of a Doubt, Lifeboat, Spellbound, and Notorious, working with Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Joan Fontaine, Carole Lombard, and more of Hollywood's biggest stars.By the end of the 1940s, Hitchcock had made himself one of Hollywood's most successful directors. But he still did not have the control he wanted. Free of Selznick at last, he was about to begin chasing it.Part 2 of our Alfred Hitchcock series — following Hitchcock's first attempt at Hollywood independence and the extraordinary run that made his name synonymous with suspense — releases next Tuesday, October 20.—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. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Edward G. Robinson helped invent the modern movie gangster. As Rico Bandello in Little Caesar, he made the short, sharp-eyed criminal not only the centre of a Hollywood picture, but a defining figure in American pop culture. And in doing so, he became a star almost overnight.This episode follows Robinson from his early years as Emanuel Goldenberg, a Romanian Jewish immigrant and serious Broadway actor, through Little Caesar, the Warner Bros. gangster cycle, and his long fight to prove he could be more than Rico. Along the way came The Whole Town's Talking, Confessions of a Nazi Spy, Double Indemnity, The Woman in the Window, Scarlet Street, and Key Largo.Also along the way came the House Un-American Activities Committee — HUAC — and the threat of the Hollywood blacklist.Robinson was never a Communist, but his public support for liberal and anti-fascist causes made him a target. He was not formally blacklisted, but "graylisted" — pushed from major pictures into smaller films and television.What began as a fight to be seen as more than the gangster became a fight to remain in Hollywood at all.This is the story of Edward G. Robinson — one of Hollywood's greatest screen actors, far more than the role that made him famous — and of his fight not only to build a career beyond the gangster, but eventually to save it when Hollywood decided he was through.—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. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Veronica Lake was one of the most unforgettable faces of 1940s Hollywood: blonde, beautiful, elusive, with a curtain of hair falling across one eye. Paramount turned that image into a sensation. But behind the "Peek-a-Boo Girl" was Constance Ockelman — a young actress whose life was far more complicated than either the glamour or the later downfall headlines allowed.From Brooklyn, Saranac Lake, Miami, and, finally, Beverly Hills, Lake arrived in Hollywood as a teenager and drifted through a handful of small parts before Paramount saw something different in her. For I Wanted Wings, the studio gave Constance Keane a new name, a new look, and a nightclub role that made audiences take notice. Veronica Lake was born.This episode follows Lake through her remarkable early rise: Sullivan's Travels with Preston Sturges and Joel McCrea; the creation of the Peek-a-Boo Girl phenomenon; and the dark, charged crime pictures that paired her with Alan Ladd, including This Gun for Hire, The Glass Key, and The Blue Dahlia. It explores how Lake became one of the defining women of the emerging film-noir cycle — cool, funny, watchful, and never quite as easy to read as Paramount's publicity suggested.It also looks behind the image: a difficult first marriage, the loss of her infant son, her growing reputation as a difficult star, wartime stardom, and the series of professional and personal blows that slowly changed Lake's place at Paramount. By the end of the 1940s, the studio that had built her into a star had chosen not to renew her contract.What followed was not one simple collapse, however much the newspapers later preferred that version. Lake kept working — in live television, regional theatre, touring productions, and low-budget films — while navigating financial hardship, troubled marriages, alcoholism, and long periods of uncertainty.Then, in 1962, an Associated Press reporter recognized Veronica Lake working as a cocktail waitress at Manhattan's Martha Washington Hotel. The resulting headlines turned her into a national fallen-star spectacle. Lake herself saw it differently.This is the story of the actress behind one of Hollywood's most enduring images: the woman Paramount made famous, the performer audiences too often underestimated, and the person who kept finding a way forward long after the cameras had moved on.—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. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

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. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

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 Bob Mackie-sketched 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. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

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. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

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. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★