Lorna Moon

Strichen, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, 1886 - 1930

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About MeLorna Moon
16 June 1886 – 1 May 1930
Novelist and screenwriter

Lorna Moon, the pseudonym of Helen Nora Wilson Low, was born in the village of Strichen, Aberdeenshire. Likened by one of her sisters to “a bolt of lightning”, Lorna was talented, ambitious and fiercely independent, qualities which helped establish her career as a successful Hollywood scriptwriter.

Throughout her life Lorna’s dark-red hair and striking looks attracted much attention. At the age of 21 she eloped with a commercial traveller who was staying at her father’s hotel. The couple emigrated to Canada, but the marriage did not last. In the intervening years, Lorna worked as a journalist before finding employment as a scriptwriter with American filmmaker, Cecil B DeMille. As a new and marketable writer Lorna quickly achieved success working on film scripts for Norma Shearer, Lionel Barrymore and Greta Garbo.

Throughout her life bouts of tuberculosis confined her to the sanitorium, where she used her time to write. In 1929 she published her novel Dark Star, an uncompromising picture of rural life inspired by her home village in Aberdeenshire, which reached the best-seller list shortly before she died.
Additional InfoImage attribution: MGM publicity portrait, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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