Moore, Merrill exuded class, beauty

“I SAW a woman today. Perfectly respectable, perfectly beautiful.”

“You’re beautiful, too, dear.”

“Well, I have a face. That’s not what I mean.”

“I’ve seen that kind of beauty, Gloria, it takes a lifetime to achieve.”

So it went between semicall girl Elizabeth Taylor, and her look-the-other-way mother Mildred Natwick in 1960’s wildly successful potboiler, “Butterfifield 8.”

The “perfectly beautiful” woman Taylor refers to is the elegant wife — Dina Merrill — of her lover, caddish Larry Harvey.

Indeed, Dina, so slender, so chiseled, so exquisitely dressed, here actually gives the occasionally overripe La Liz a run for her money in the beauty sweepstakes.

SO LET’S say a really fond goodbye to that most glorious — and one of the most rebellious and openminded of “rich girls” — Dina Merrill.

I got to know Dina pretty well, and like the rest of the world, loved her as a friend, philanthropist and an underrated actress.

She was unfailingly beautiful, civilized, talented, and I don’t think she ever made an enemy in the world. Several summers ago, I saw Dina at the East Hampton Maidstone Club. As usual, she quipped “Remember, Liz, I made you rich,” as she stood in line for a sandwich. She had a marvelous full life — three husbands and a number of children. (Most famously, there was her 20-year marriage to actor Clift Robertson.)

Dina gave achievement and beauty and being a “normal” person, a good name. She died at 93, as blamelessly as she had lived.

Dina made her stage debut in 1945’s “The Mermaid’s Singing” and then “George Washington Slept Here.” Merrill quit a year later, under pressure from her mother, the formidable owner of General Foods, Marjorie Merriweather Post. (Dina grew up at Mar-aLago, long before it became the “Southern White House.”)

But maternal displeasure be damned, Dina couldn’t shake the acting bug. She later appeared in several dozen fifilms, always better than her material, and rising above the patented patrician image. One felt there was considerably more to Dina than her incredible cheekbones and immaculately blonde coif. And, there was!

Aside from “Butterfifield,” she scored in “Desk Set,” “The Sundowners,” “Operation Petticoat,” “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” and “The Young Savages.” Later, for Bob Altman, she lent her allure and assurance to Bob Altman’s “The Player” and “A Wedding.” Dina was a constant presence on TV for decades. Her acting credits number about 100! She gave tons of her money to great causes, and she didn’t make a great fuss about it, either. Rest easy, girl! ANOTHER ICON of real style and genuine niceness has also passed, Sir Roger Moore. Famous as the big screen’s James Bond and the small screen’s “The Saint,” Roger was effffffffffffortlessly engaging and selfamused. He just didn’t take himself very seriously, or at least he never seemed to, publicly. Running into him was always an unalloyed pleasure.

He was so beautiful as a young man, he once remarked that certain actresses just refused to appear opposite him. One who did not refuse was Elizabeth Taylor in “The Last time I Saw Paris.” He appeared as her lover. When Moore and Taylor shared the screen it was almost more than Technicolor could bear!

I was never a huge fan of his Bond fifilms, but he had an undeniable elan, and certainly audiences reacted to Moore’s urbane take on Ian Fleming’s iconic character. (I simply prefer the rougher 007, as embodied by Sean Connery and Daniel Craig.)

The passing of Moore and Dina Merrill isn’t simply sad because they are gone — neither were youngsters. But it’s what they represented, what we are losing so rapidly — beautiful, well-behaved celebrities who spelled class with a capital C and never took a false step, at least not that we ever saw.

Sure, we still have a few of those left, and some younger types who are attempting to raise standards, but it’s a tough fifight.