Joan Mellen is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Temple University, Philadelphia, USA. Among her books are Marilyn Monroe (1973), Voices from the Japanese Cinema (1975), The Waves at Genji's Door: Japan Through Its Cinema (1976), the dual biography Hellman and Hammett: The Legendary Passion of Lilian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett (1996), and, more recently, Faustian Bargains: Lyndon Johnson and Mac Wallace in the Robber Baron Culture of Texas (Bloomsbury 2016) and Blood in the Water: How the US and Israel Conspired to Ambush the USS Liberty (2018).
She is the author of In the Realm of the Senses (2004) and Modern Times (2006), also in the BFI Film Classics series.