Dina Merrill, actress, socialite and philanthropist, dies at 93

Dina Merrill, an actress whose aristocratic poise and willowy good looks earned her many film and TV roles as well-bred society women — parts that reflected her own life as a scion of two of America’s richest families, died May 22 at her home in East Hampton, N.Y. She was 93.

Her parents were Edward Hutton, co-founder of the stock brokerage, and breakfast foods heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, who married into additional fortunes and became a dominant Washington socialite of her era.

Born Nedenia Marjorie Hutton in New York on Dec. 29, 1923, Merrill grew up amid more than plenty. Her family’s Manhattan apartment had 66 rooms, and their retreat on the North Shore of Long Island had 59, in addition to a pool, tennis courts and a horse show ring. Their sprawling south Florida showplace, Mar-a-Lago, was purchased in 1985 by businessman and future president Donald Trump, who converted it into a private club.

After some TV work, Merrill’s Hollywood breakthrough came in 1957 as a library reference clerk in Desk Set, a comedy that marked the eighth screen pairing of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.

In BUtterfield 8 (1960), a drama that won Elizabeth Taylor an Oscar for best actress for portraying a doomed party girl, Merrill had a thankless part as the long-suffering society wife of Laurence Harvey.

In addition to guest appearances on TV well into the 1990s, Merrill periodically returned to film work. In supporting roles, she joined the crew of family eccentrics in Robert Altman’s social satire A Wedding (1978) and played a snooty, white-gloved matron in Caddyshack II (1988), a golf comedy starring Jackie Mason.