Lorna Moon

Other names: 
She was born Helen Nora Wilson Low. Her married surname was Hebditch.
Dates: 
16 June 1886 - 1 May 1930

Nora Low was born in Strichen, Aberdeenshire, in 1886, the daughter of Charles Low, plasterer, and Margaret Benzies. In 1907 she married William Hebditch, a commercial traveller. They had a son, William. They emigrated to Canada. In 1913 she left the husband and son to live with Walter Moon, with whom she had a daughter, Mary Leonore Moon. She began working as a journalist and adopted the pen-name Lorna Moon.

In 1921 she moved to Hollywood to work as a scriptwriter for Cecil B de Mille. During her career in Hollywood she had a third child by Cecil B. De Mille’s brother William, who was adopted by Cecil B. de Mille Lorna Moon contracted tuberculosis and died in a sanatorium in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1930, aged 44. She was cremated and her ashes were returned to Scotland, to be scattered on Mormond Hill near Strichen.

In addition to scriptwriting, she wrote a volume of short stories Doorways in Drumorty (1925) and the novel Dark Star (1929).

Sources
Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women
p211, entry by Glenda Norquay
The Collected Works of Lorna Moon
Edited by Glenda Norquay
My Secret Mother
Richard de Mille