Elinor Glyn as Hollywood Labourer

Writer and taste-maker Elinor Glyn performed a kind of paradoxical labour to define her authorial signature well beyond that traditionally accorded screenwriters. Thus Glyn cultivated power outside the role of author through performance, supervision of production if not direction, commentary about Hollywood, and in some cases control over casting or the moulding of the performances of others. But these other areas of authority themselves arise from the value of the Glyn narrative as something highly recognizable during the 1920s.