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.

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.

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.