J. E. Smyth is a film critic and historian. She was born in New England and was educated at Wellesley College and Yale University. Smyth has written and edited several books about Hollywood, including a new edition of Jane Allen’s novel, I Lost My Girlish Laughter (Random House, 2019) and Nobody’s Girl Friday (Oxford University Press, 2018), a history of the many high-powered women who worked in the golden age of the Hollywood studio system (1924-1954). In 2021, she was named an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences film scholar for her latest project, a biography of Screen Writers Guild president, labor leader, and feminist, Mary C. McCall Jr.