Customer Reviews

My Secret Mother: Lorna Moon

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Who was Lorna Moon? And why did she abandon him? These are just a few of the questions Cecil B. de Mille's son Richard explores in the most absorbing biography of the year. His quest takes him from Hollywood to Canada and a small village in Scotland, and nets him a sister, a brother, cousins galore, and family secrets some didn't want revealed. It is both lyrical and tragic and his father and uncle would have been proud.

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Lorna Moon's accomplishments are mostly unknown in Scotland until now.Richard de Mille has restored the knowledge of her literary talents, and his account of her life is haunting and poignant.Lorna was a child of her race,strong, resilient,tough,but tempered with Celtic melancholy and sweetness.She leapt from obscurity to the highest pinnacle in Hollywood capturing along the way the attention of the De Mille brothers. The Author has distilled the essence of Lorna Moon from a distant memory to a living presence that dominates the book from beginning to end. The mixture of early Hollywood, family secrets, and Scottish roots will absorb and delight all readers.

It is not clear to me why Richard de Mille wrote this book. Authors write for an audience - they want their works read. Who did he expect to read this biography/memoir/investigation? I can think of three possibilities:

Perhaps he expected those beguiled by the de Mille [DeMille] name to be interested. Certainly that is why I picked it up: I have repeatedly read and enjoyed Agnes de Mille's memoirs ["Dance to the Piper", "Speak to Me, Dance with Me", "And Promenade Home", etc.], and having heard whispers of a half-brother, I wanted to know more about it and how that affected the family. Mr. de Mille must have expected to reel in those readers, because the first 50 pages of the book barely mention Lorna Moon, instead concentrate on the history of the de Mille family and his upbringing within the family.

Or did he expect to lure those who feed on celebrity gossip? Certainly the story has the makings: an illegitimate child of famous parents [a scandal in the 1920s]; famous Hollywood names; passionate, bohemian women who believed in "free love" [Lorna Moon left 3 children scattered around the world]. The elements are there - but Richard de Mille is not the writer to dish the dirt: he has an analytic, philosophical bent -- his previous books include a volume on Carlos Castenada. Just the facts, ma'am.

Finally, as the title suggests, he is trying to "unsecretize" his mother, to share her contributions with the world. If that is the case, wouldn't it have made more sense to share her writings with the world? Clearly, she valued them more than her children. [He has indeed written an introduction to a recently issued "Collected Works of Lorna Moon"].

My best guess is that Richard de Mille wrote his book to satisfy his own curiosity. Sadly he never found out everything he wanted to know, especially about his mother. Truth has a way of being out of reach, just beyond our grasp. What came across was that (1) members of the de Mille family were cold, unable to express feeling [and Richard's dispassionate presentation of the entire story seems to indicate that he shares this trait] and (2) although she abandoned him, Lorna did give Richard life, and he has become her apologist [he writes, "How can I call her honest when she told so many false stories about herself? Those stories did no harm. No one counted on their being true." -- a strange definition of honesty. He also wrote "Work came before ... certainly before children ... A book or a child was something she created and gave to someone else to care for"].

At the end of his book, de Mille writes, "My purpose has been to tell a true story about some people who are gone, some of them famous, some obscure, whose lines crossed one afternoon to produce their chronicler." And there is indeed a story here. Unfortunately, de Mille gave us data, not a story. That remains to be done.

This book is written in a style that appears as if the author wrote down everything he could remember in his entire life and no editor sorted it out for him. Boring.