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PODCAST

When They Were Making It

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

tv & film film history

All Episodes

86:02

Edward G. Robinson: Hollywood's Literal OG — Little...

When They Were Making It ·

2026/09/29

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

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93:07

A Star Is Born (1954): The Chaotic Comeback of Judy...

When They Were Making It ·

2026/09/22

By 1950, MGM was done with Judy Garland — and so, it seemed, was Hollywood. A Star Is Born was the film that was supposed to change all of that.After a devastating breakdown, the end of her studio contract, and an industry convinced she was finished, Garland spent the next two years rebuilding herself — on concert stages in London, Dublin, and New York. By 1952, she and her husband-manager, Sid Luft, were betting everything on one extraordinary project.This episode follows the making of the

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75:58

Veronica Lake: The Making and Unmaking of a Movie...

When They Were Making It ·

2026/09/15

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

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98:36

Charlie Chaplin, Part 2: The War Against Hollywood's...

When They Were Making It ·

2026/09/08

This is Part 2 of our two-part series on Charlie Chaplin.At the height of his silent-film power, Charlie Chaplin was one of the most famous and successful people in the world. He owned his studio, controlled his work, and had transformed the Tramp into a global icon.But the life behind the screen was becoming impossible to keep private.Part 2 of our Charlie Chaplin series follows Chaplin through the collapse of his marriage to Lita Grey, the devastating divorce scandal that threatened his

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89:37

Charlie Chaplin, Part 1: The World's Greatest...

When They Were Making It ·

2026/09/01

This is Part 1 of our two-part series on Charlie Chaplin.Charlie Chaplin, one of the greatest icons of silent cinema and film comedy, built his legend on making the world laugh. But behind his beloved image was a private life that was increasingly troubling — and, throughout his life, increasingly difficult to contain.Part 1 of our two-part series follows Chaplin from a childhood in poverty and the workhouse, through the London music halls and Fred Karno's comedy company — where he learned

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92:30

Shirley Temple: Hollywood's Most Famous Child Star —...

When They Were Making It ·

2026/08/25

Shirley Temple was the most famous child star Hollywood had ever seen — a six-year-old who became America's biggest box-office attraction, helped carry Twentieth Century-Fox through the Great Depression, and grew up inside a studio system built around keeping her little for as long as possible.From the bizarre Baby Burlesks shorts to Little Miss Marker, Bright Eyes, and "On the Good Ship Lollipop," Shirley became a national phenomenon almost overnight. Before she was seven, her face was

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88:41

Dorothy Dandridge, Part 2: Hollywood's First Black...

When They Were Making It ·

2026/08/18

By 1955, Dorothy Dandridge had done what Hollywood once seemed determined to make impossible — become a genuine leading lady, carry a major studio picture, and earn a Best Actress nomination at the Academy Awards. But after Carmen Jones, the breakthrough Hollywood celebrated would become a career it had no idea how to sustain.Part 2 of our two-part series on Dorothy Dandridge begins on Oscar night in 1955, with Dandridge seated alongside Grace Kelly, Judy Garland, Audrey Hepburn, and Jane

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81:39

Dorothy Dandridge, Part 1: A Star of Her Own Making —...

When They Were Making It ·

2026/08/11

Dorothy Dandridge was one of the most electrifying talents Hollywood ever tried to contain — a trailblazing performer who would become the first Black woman nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, and whose story began long before anyone in Hollywood was paying attention.From a childhood spent on the road — singing and dancing through segregated churches and theaters across the South before she'd even learned to read — to performing at the Cotton Club by sixteen, Dandridge spent her early years

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100:15

Sunset Boulevard (1950): Hollywood's Autopsy — Billy...

When They Were Making It ·

2026/08/04

In 1949, Billy Wilder sat inside a theatre in Evanston, Illinois, and watched his new film, Sunset Boulevard, fall apart in front of its first audience.Wilder had made a picture about the stars Hollywood had abandoned, the illusions it had created, and the cruelty beneath its glamorous surface. But instead of being unsettled by what they saw, the audience was laughing — and the film that would become Hollywood's darkest portrait of itself seemed in danger of collapsing before anyone had

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101:55

Mae West: The Most Dangerous Woman in Hollywood —...

When They Were Making It ·

2026/07/28

Mae West shook up Depression-era Hollywood with a persona unlike anything American audiences had seen before — sexually confident, unapologetically funny, and always in control. She became one of the biggest stars in the country, only to face increasingly strict censorship from the same industry that had embraced her.This episode of WTWMI follows the rise, fall, and reinvention of Mae West — from her working-class childhood in Brooklyn and years in vaudeville to the Broadway scandals,

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99:16

Marlon Brando, Part 3: The Final Act — The Godfather,...

When They Were Making It ·

2026/07/21

By 1970, Hollywood had decided Marlon Brando was finished.He had gone more than a decade without a major hit. His films lost money. His reputation had become almost impossible to insure. He was deep in debt, increasingly isolated, and more interested in escaping to his island in Tahiti than proving anything to the industry that had once crowned him its greatest actor.Then came The Godfather.Part 3 of our three-part series on Marlon Brando follows one of the most extraordinary reversals in

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90:13

Marlon Brando, Part 2: The Wilderness Years — Guys...

When They Were Making It ·

2026/07/14

Programming note: Our Marlon Brando series has been expanded from two parts to three, allowing us to give the final decades of his life and career the space they deserve. Part 3 releases Tuesday, July 21.—By the end of the 1950s, Marlon Brando had everything he had spent his career fighting for. An Oscar. Money. Power. His own production company. And the freedom to make films on his own terms.Then he began discovering what complete freedom could cost.Part 2 of our three-part series on

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75:21

Marlon Brando, Part 1: The Early Years — A Streetcar...

When They Were Making It ·

2026/07/07

Programming note: Our Marlon Brando series has been expanded from two parts to three, allowing us to give the final decades of his life and career the space they deserve. Part 2 is out now — Part 3 releases Tuesday, July 21.—On December 3, 1947, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York, a twenty-three-year-old actor in a torn T-shirt walked onto a Broadway stage — and American acting was never the same again.Before he became Marlon Brando, he was Bud: a restless, wounded kid from Omaha,

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101:16

Lana Turner: The Sweater Girl Who Became MGM's Most...

When They Were Making It ·

2026/06/30

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

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88:49

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961): How Hollywood Rewrote...

When They Were Making It ·

2026/06/23

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

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112:23

Rudolph Valentino: Hollywood's First Sex Symbol —...

When They Were Making It ·

2026/06/16

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

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86:59

Marilyn Monroe, Part 3: JFK, a Hollywood Comeback,...

When They Were Making It ·

2026/06/09

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

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1:44

Trailer — This Season on WTWMI

When They Were Making It ·

2026/06/08

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

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75:49

Marilyn Monroe, Part 2: The Playwright, the Prince,...

When They Were Making It ·

2026/06/02

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

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108:32

Marilyn Monroe, Part 1: From Norma Jeane to Marilyn —...

When They Were Making It ·

2026/05/26

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

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