DEATH-NOTICES

Actress Dina Merrill, last surviving child of Marjorie Merriweather Post, dies

Shannon Donnelly

sdonnelly@pbdailynews.com

Dina Merrill, an actress, artist and the last surviving child of Marjorie Merriweather Post, died Monday at the East Hampton, N.Y., home where she had lived for more than six decades. She was 93.

Born Dec. 9, 1923, in New York, she was the only child of her mother’s marriage to financier Edward F. Hutton. She is related to Prince George and Princess Charlotte — third and fourth in line to the English throne — through their mother’s mutual ancestor, explorer Meriwether Lewis.

> PHOTOS: Dina Merrill through the years at Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach

In some ways, Nedenia Hutton — nicknamed Deenie — was a typical child. She once said in an interview that she remembered summers when she “milked cows, went skinny-dipping in the lake, and shot frogs to eat their legs.” Not always well-behaved, she was 10 when she accompanied her mother and her mother’s new husband, Joseph Davies, on their honeymoon aboard the Sea Cloud.

“In Santo Domingo, when [Dominican Republic] President [Rafael] Trujillo came aboard for dinner,” she told journalist George Turley, “my stepfather handed me a recording of their national anthem, and said, ‘Take this to the engine room, and when we get to dessert, put it on, and we will all stand up and drink a toast.’ And I, being the nasty 10-year-old I was, put it on with the appetizer course, the salad course, the fish course, the main course and the dessert. And they stood and toasted every time.”

But for the most part, her formative years were far from average. She grew up in luxury, dividing her time between her Mar-a-Lago home, a fabled New York apartment — where she was driven to school by a chauffeur, against her wish to “ride the bus like the other kids” — and the Sea Cloud, where guests included the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

Hoping to abide by her father’s wishes that she become a lawyer and, possibly, a congresswoman, Miss Merrill enrolled in George Washington University but left after a year to attend the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She supported herself — much to her father’s displeasure — as a $10-an-hour Vogue model.

“It never occurred to me to ask my father or mother to pay for something they didn’t believe in,” she said in a 1979 interview. “My ambitions were my own — not exactly the ones they had for me.”

She made her three-line Broadway debut in The Mermaids Singing in 1945.

A year later, she married Stanley Rumbough, handsome heir to the Colgate-Palmolive fortune and a former Marine. She was a stay-at-home wife and mother to Stanley Jr., David and Nina for the next 10 years, until she began easing back into acting.

At the time of her first movie role in Desk Set with Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, she was well over 30 but perfect for socialite-wife-aristocrat roles.

She appeared in more than 30 movies, including The Sundowners, Young Savages, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, Butterfield 8, Operation Petticoat, The Player and Just Tell Me What You Want, as well as Broadway and television roles.

She and Rumbough later divorced.

She would marry twice more, to actor Cliff Robertson, with whom she had a daughter, and, after divorcing Robertson in 1986, to former Navy pilot, actor and banker Ted Hartley, who survives her.

With Hartley, she formed Pavilion Communications, which purchased RKO Pictures, for which she served as vice chairwoman.

She and Hartley divided their time between their home in Palm Beach and East Hampton.

Miss Merrill remained unruffled after a nasty attack by Donald Trump in his book The Art of TheComeback, in which he described her as Mrs. Post’s “arrogant and aloof daughter who was born with her mother’s beauty but not her brains.”

In an interview with a Palm Beach Daily News reporter at the time, Miss Merrill hadn’t read the book but began to giggle when the reporter read passages from it.

He wrote:

“During my fight to save Mar-a-Lago, Merrill would constantly criticize me and say things behind my back, all of which would get back to me. She should have been the one to save Mar-a-Lago. Mommy had given her the money, and it would have been an easy and popular thing to have done.

“Instead, she lives in a terribly furnished Palm Beach condominium, thinking about her failed acting career and how she can make me look as ‘nouveau’ as possible.”

“How lovely,” Miss Merrill said after hearing the passage. “He’s a charming man, isn’t he?”

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Wealthy beyond measure due to large inheritances from each of her parents, she was a generous philanthropist and a hands-on volunteer with many charities, including the New York Mission Society, founded by her mother-in-law Margaretta Colgate Rumbough; the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, of which she was a co-founder; as well as Planned Parenthood, the New York Botanical Garden, the Palm Beach Theater Guild, the Alzheimer’s Association, Orbis International, the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons, and her alma mater, the American Academy of the Dramatic Arts, from which she received a Lifetime Achievement Award and where a scholarship is named for her.

Miss Merill was predeceased by son, David, who died in a boating accident, and daughter, Heather, who died of cancer.

In addition to her husband, she is survived by a son, Stanley; a daughter, Nina Roosenburg; a stepson, Philippe Hartley; six grandchildren; four step-grandchildren; and two step-great-grandchildren.

At her request, there will be no formal funeral. She will be cremated and her ashes inurned at The Episcopal Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea’s columbarium, near her son’s, at a private family ceremony.

A celebration of life will take place in June.

> Before Ivanka Trump, Dina Merrill was Palm Beach’s first blond princess