J. E. Smyth is a film critic, historian, and contributing writer at Cineaste. She has written and edited several books, including a new edition of Jane Allen’s controversial Hollywood novel, I Lost My Girlish Laughter (2019); Nobody’s Girl Friday (2018), a history of the many high-powered women who worked in the golden age of the Hollywood studio system; and the acclaimed historian’s approach to classical Hollywood auteur theory, Fred Zinnemann and the Cinema of Resistance (2014).