Dina Merrill was actress and heiress

Dina Merrill, the rebellious heiress who defied her super-rich parents to become a movie star, has died at age 93

Merrill, raised in part on the Mar-aLago estate in Florida now owned by U.S. President Donald Trump, died Monday of heart failure.

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 blond 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 TV programs such as Murder, She Wrote and The Nanny.

Becoming an actress was not considered proper for someone of Merrill’s status. Her mother was Marjorie Merriweather Post, heiress to the Post cereal fortune and one of the nation’s richest women. Her father was E.F. Hutton, founder of the stockbroker firm that bore his name.

Merrill 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, to marry Stanley Rumbough, Jr., heir to a Colgate fortune.

After the birth of her daughter, Merrill resumed her acting and modelling career and was invited to Hollywood by Dick Powell for appearances in his TV series.

Merrill and Rumbough divorced in 1966, the same year she married actor Cliff Robertson. As a result, her name was dropped from the Social Register, which excluded actors.