When They Were Making It

She was one of MGM's biggest stars, a celebrated actress widely regarded as one of the most beautiful women in the world. But Ava Gardner was never entirely comfortable with the image that made her famous.
From a tobacco farm in North Carolina to the heights of Hollywood stardom, Gardner's rise began almost by accident, after a photograph of her caught the attention of MGM. With The Killers, Mogambo, and The Night of the Iguana, she proved herself a formidable actress, even as her extraordinary beauty threatened to overshadow her talent. Her turbulent marriages to Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw, and Frank Sinatra kept her in the headlines, while her struggles with alcohol and growing frustrations with the studio system complicated both her career and her personal life.
This week, we're exploring the extraordinary life of Ava Gardner — from her unlikely discovery and MGM superstardom to her eventual departure from Hollywood for a new life in Spain and, later, London.
Along the way, we'll explore her friendships with Gregory Peck and Grace Kelly, as well as her close bond with Ernest Hemingway. We'll also look at her outspoken support for civil rights, a cause she championed throughout her life.
Beyond the glamour and scandalous headlines lies the story of a talented, fiercely independent woman who spent much of her life trying to reconcile the person she was with the image the world had created for her.

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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 ★

She was the face of the Roaring Twenties, Hollywood's original It Girl, and one of the biggest box-office stars of the silent era. Then the headlines stopped being about her movies.
From a Brooklyn tenement to Paramount superstardom, Clara Bow's rise was extraordinary. With Mantrap, It, and the Oscar-winning Wings, she helped define a generation. But the arrival of talking pictures, relentless studio pressures, and a string of explosive scandals threatened everything she'd built. In 1931, the sensational trial of her former secretary, Daisy DeVoe, turned Bow's private life into a national spectacle.
This week, we're exploring the extraordinary life of Clara Bow — her difficult childhood, meteoric rise, Hollywood romances, public downfall, and eventual retreat from the spotlight.
More than ninety years after her last film, her influence lives on, from Margot Robbie's character in Babylon (2022) to Taylor Swift's song "Clara Bow" on The Tortured Poets Department (2024). 
Beyond the scandalous headlines and enduring myths lies the story of a remarkably talented actress — whose legacy was as extraordinary as it was complicated.

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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 ★

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.

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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 ★

When Alfred Hitchcock's first bid for independence failed, he pivoted — and began a career-defining decade that would bring some of his most celebrated films, transform him into a household name, and lead him toward a gamble that would change Hollywood forever.

Continuing our October Halloween series, this is Part 2 of our three-part look at the life of Alfred Hitchcock.

After Rope and Under Capricorn brought his first attempt at independence to an end, Hitchcock returned to Warner Bros. and began rebuilding. Stage Fright, Strangers on a Train, and I Confess followed — along with new collaborators, including cinematographer Robert Burks, and the beginning of his partnership with Grace Kelly in Dial M for Murder.
Then came Paramount. A landmark deal negotiated by Lew Wasserman gave Hitchcock greater freedom, a share of his films' profits, and eventually ownership of some of his greatest work. With Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, The Trouble with Harry, and The Man Who Knew Too Much, he entered the extraordinary run that would make him one of Hollywood's most successful directors.
At the same time, Alfred Hitchcock Presents made him a household name. But success brought its own complications: the end of key creative partnerships, Grace Kelly's departure from Hollywood, Hitchcock's plans for Vera Miles, and the difficult production of Vertigo with Kim Novak — a film that initially disappointed, despite eventually becoming one of his most celebrated.
This episode follows Hitchcock from the collapse of Transatlantic Pictures to North by Northwest, the spectacular hit that left him with more control than ever before. And then, after the biggest production of his career, he began looking for something smaller, darker, and far more dangerous: Psycho.
Part 3 of our Alfred Hitchcock series — covering Psycho, The Birds, Marnie and Tippi Hedren, Hitchcock's struggle to keep pace with a changing Hollywood, Frenzy, and his final years — releases next Tuesday, October 27.

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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.

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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 ★