Dina Merrill was heiress and actress
Dina Merrill, a rebellious heiress who defied her superrich parents to become a movie star, often portraying stylish wives or “the other woman,” has died at age 93.
Merrill, raised in part on the Mar-a-lago estate in Florida now owned by U.S. President Donald Trump, died Monday, according to family spokeswoman Selena Albanese. Merrill died of heart failure at her home in East Hampton, Albanese told The Associated Press.
Starting in the 1950s, Merrill appeared in more than 100 films and television programs, her break coming after Katharine Hepburn recommended her for the 1957 Tracy-hepburn comedy “The Desk Set.”
Merrill, who had the poised, aristocratic beauty of fellow blonde Grace Kelly, co-starred with Cary Grant and Tony Curtis in “Operation Petticoat,” Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr in “The Sundowners” and Oscar winner Elizabeth Taylor in “Butterfield 8.” More recently, she was part of Robert Altman’s ensemble cast for the Hollywood satire “The Player” and in television programs such as “Murder, She Wrote” and “The Nanny.”
But becoming an actress was not considered proper for someone of Merrill’s privileged status. Her mother was Marjorie Merriweather Post, heiress to the Post cereal fortune and one of the U.S.’S richest women. Her father was E.F. Hutton, founder of the stockbroker firm that bore his name. Heiress Barbara Hutton was a cousin.
“Mother was politically and diplomatically and every which way well connected,” Merrill said in 2000, “but she didn’t know anyone in show business. Of course my parents’ eyebrows shot up when I said I wanted to be an actress. And I guess they said, really between themselves, ‘Let the dear girl try and fall on her face.’”
Merrill left George Washington University after a year to enrol at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. During the summer she worked at a regional theatre where she painted scenery, sewed costumes and played occasional small roles.
She made her Broadway debut in 1945 with “The Mermaids Singing” and followed with “George Washington Slept Here” and off-broadway plays. She quit acting in 1946, partly because of her mother’s pressure.
“My mother brainwashed me,” she said. “I turned down my career to marry my Marine.”
He was Stanley Rumbough Jr., heir to a Colgate fortune who had been serving as a White House aide. After his Marine Corps’ service he became head of the Metal Containers Corp. and a company that made pari-mutuel betting machines. The couple had three children — Stanley, David and Nina. After the birth of her daughter, Merrill resumed her acting and modeling career and was invited to Hollywood by Dick Powell for appearances in his television series.
Merrill and Rumbough divorced in 1966, the same year she married actor Cliff Robertson. As a result, her name was dropped from the snobbish Social Register, which excluded actors.
“I was thrilled when they dropped me,” she said in 1983. “I was particularly thrilled because (Robertson) was furious. He wanted to be in the Social Register.”
Merrill and Robertson had a daughter, Heather, but divorced in 1989. In the same year, she married Ted Hartley, a former pilot and actor turned investment banker.
She was born Nedenia Hutton in New York City, and was drawn to the acting life at age 8, when she played an Indian in a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta at Greenvale School. She grew up in lavish surroundings, particularly Mar-a-lago, her parents’ 118-room Mediterranean-moorish estate in Palm Beach, Fla. The property was later purchased by Trump, who as president has made Mara-lago an unofficial weekend White House.
When Hutton began her acting career, she chose to call herself Dina Merrill, a combination of her and a brother-in-law’s names.
“I didn’t want to trade on the Hutton name,” she explained. “I always wanted to make it on my own.”
Merrill was involved in numerous charitable and artistic causes. Her son David’s diabetes inspired her to establish the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation. She chaired the New York City Mission Society, which supports young people living in poverty. She was a trustee of the Eugene O’neill Theater Center and served on the board of trustees for the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.