Lucky Star: Dina Merrill
(Recently I read in the Wall Street Journal that some critics had questioned the wisdom of Dina Merrill’s sitting on the board of directors of Lehman Bros. The implication was that an actress and socialite didn’t have the financial know-how or boardroom expertise to pass judgment on decisions made by the company’s executives and that it was basically a vanity post, one that greased the doors for various social climbers in the illustrious firm. What a bunch of hogwash. Dina Merrill had left Lehman prior to its collapse and certainly can’t be blamed for its demise. It’s ludicrous to single her out when obviously the company was led into bankruptcy by billionaire CEO Richard Fuld. Dina Merrill had more class than the entire board put together, and probably more brains too. She was and is an extremely sharp, kind and generous person who would be a welcome addition to any board of directors.
But the mere mention of Dina Merrill’s name brought back a wealth of memories. I had interviewed her back in 1988 for Quest Magazine and have always had a soft spot in my heart for her. Not only was she always drop-dead gorgeous, witty, charming and fun, but she always came across as smarter than people gave her credit for. She represents to me the last of a breed: the sophisticated star. Today most celebrities mistake Las Vegas for Monaco. They have no understanding or appreciation for elegance and style. They seem content to look like bedraggled couch potatoes at home and to behave like teamsters when on the road or dealing with the press. Very few stars today, other than perhaps Meryl Streep and Glenn Close (who is distantly related to Dina Merrill) know how to act like a star without behaving like a victim of narcissistic personality disorder.
No, there are few to rival Dina Merrill today. So now twenty years later, I’m resurrecting my profile of her. I’m sure she’s still as beautiful and fascinating as ever. I’ve added a short postscript to the article to update fans on her life since the piece came out. — Brooks Peters)
A Touch of Class
The Life of Dina Merrill
Moss Hart told her, “You’re too goddamn normal to be an actress.” Others thought she was too refined, too pretty. Her parents hoped she’d settle down and get married like a good little rich girl. She did — twice: once to Colgate heir Stanley Rumbough, Jr. and later to actor Cliff Robertson. But Dina Merrill knew she was destined to be an actress ever since she was president of the Dramat at Mount Vernon. “It’s fun being a lot of other people, getting into their skins,” she says. “It’s fascinating to lead someone else’s life for a while.”
As if Dina Merrill’s life hasn’t been fascinating enough. The daughter of Marjorie Merriweather Post and E. F. Hutton (both above), Nedenia Marjorie Hutton grew up surrounded by celebrities, glamour and riches beyond compare. As a child she spent “three to four months a year” on the Sea Cloud, her parents’ 316-foot, four-masted square rigger. Constructed in 1931, the Sea Cloud (below) was a veritable Versailles on the high seas, with a crew of 72, working fireplaces, palatial staterooms, and a set of Sevres china that was glued to the tabletops in case of storms.
“I hardly ever went to school,” the popular actress recalls. But the observation deck proved a better tutor than the governess her parents provided. Dina sailed along the coasts of Scandinavia, Russia, around North Africa, through the Caribbean and the Panama Canal and on to the Galapagos Islands where she remembers watching tortoises and iguanas cavorting. She would have visited the Far East if war hadn’t come with the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, whereupon the family yacht was commandeered by the U. S. Coast Guard.
After the war, Dina’s mother grew bored with the yacht, eventually selling it in 1954. She also jettisoned her husband, marrying twice more afterward. Having changed hands several times, the Sea Cloud lay virtually abandoned in Panama until a group of Hamburg businessmen bought her up and turned her into the world’s largest passenger-carrying tall ship. “They put a lot of extra cabins on her,” Dina says, with a small frown. “She now holds eighty people but she’s still gorgeous.”
The desk in the dining room of Dina’s aerie-like apartment overlooking the East River, where she’s lived for twenty years, contains her father’s extensive scrimshaw collection. A series of English seascapes painted by David James that were once on the yacht line the walls. “I love the way he paints water,” she says. “You can almost dive into those waves.” A model of the Sea Cloud sits prominently on a window sill, further evidence that she can’t get the magnificent vessel out of her system.
Dina’s fantasy childhood existed on land, too, in the eighteen-acre, 115-room Mar-a-Lago estate in palm Beach that her mother built for $8 million at the height of the Roaring Twenties. Besides a ninety-foot castle, the grounds boasted a nine-hole golf course and a gigantic swimming pool. Dina lived in an enchanted bedroom that looked as if it had been conceived by Perrault. The door handles were sculpted squirrels; fairy tale scenes were carved in relief inside niches above the fireplace, delicate pink climbing roses were fillagreed on the walls. It was a home worthy of Sleeping Beauty. Today, the Moorish mansion belongs to real estate czar Donald Trump, but his wife Ivana still calls the child’s suite “Deenie’s room.”
It was her real-life fairy godmother, Billie Burke (better known as Glinda, the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz) who got sixteen-year-old Dina her first professional gig on a radio program. Dina remembers the event well, because in order to take the job she first had to join the American Federation of Radio Performers. “It cost $50,” she recalls. “I said I’m only being paid $25, and they said, ‘Well that’s too bad.’” I was furious.” But she paid the extra money because she “wanted the credit.” This might seem like a petty comment coming from one of the country’s richest women, but Dina’s parents didn’t approve of her career, and she, true to her pioneer stock, was determined to pay her own way. “They figured that I would fall on my face and flop,” she says. “They were constantly amazed when I came home and said I got a new job.”
Dina Merrill (she borrowed the stage name from a brother-in-law) trained at the Actors’ Studio and the Academy of Dramatic Arts, working mornings as a fashion photographer’s model to pay her expenses. She also studied with Herbert Berghof, Uta Hagen and Stella Adler. She made her Broadway debut in the John Van Druten play, The Mermaids Singing, speaking only three lines. She was also the leading lady’s understudy, but unfortunately the star never got sick.
Despite her promising career, (she appeared on both the cover of Life and Town & Country, above) Dina gave up the stage for eight years to get married and raise three children: Stanley, David and Nina. “I was programmed to be a wife and mother,” she explains. Her politically-minded husband, Stanley Rumbough, Jr. was appointed to Eisenhower’s staff, and Dina moved to Washington to play the role of dutiful wife. The footlights beckoned, however, and when the opportunity came to star in a television movie with Dick Powell she jumped at the chance. “I finally realized I could do both,” she says. “Nobody had ever told me that before.” (Dina seen below with co-stars Burt Lancaster and Efram Zimbalist, Jr.)
Although she’s frequently referred to as a “socialite actress,” a label that rubs her the wrong way, Dina Merrill has tackled several unconventional roles. In the comedy film Just Tell Me What You Want directed by Sidney Lumet, she played an alcoholic, to great effect. In the play Surprise and VIPs, she portrayed what People magazine described as “a Teutonic child psychologist with a boot fetish.” She also appeared in a revival of Angel Street in 1976. She received good notices for her portrayal of a mentally ill mother in the low-budget cable film A Brass Ring, and surprised everyone by holding her own opposite Natalia Makarova as a ballet company angel in the 1983 Broadway revival of On Your Toes. Stage and film casting director Leonard Finger believes that “Dina Merrill is one of the great ladies of the theatre.” He considers her best performance to be that of the jilted wife in Butterfield 8, also starring Elizabeth Taylor (below) and Laurence Harvey. She was “heartbreaking and beautiful,” he says.
It was at Gary Cooper’s Hollywood home in 1956 that Dina first met Oscar-winning actor Cliff Robertson. Ten years later, they were married, eventually having a daughter Heather. He achieved fame of a different sort when he was blacklisted for reporting that David Begelman of Columbia Pictures had forged a check. The behind-the-scenes story came to light in the bestseller Indecent Exposure by David McClintick. Now separated (the divorce will be final in September), Dina still respects his integrity. “I was very sorry for him because he wasn’t working, and unfairly so. But he survived through it,” she comments. “It’s interesting that that story was never made into a film.” (Cliff Robertson, below, with Gidget co-star Sandra Dee.)
Dina Merrill, too, is known for voicing her opinions on difficult issues. She’s on the board of at least ten charities and foundations, and was the first woman ever to sit on the board of E. F. Hutton. As a volunteer at the New York City Mission Society she comes face to face with the city’s staggering drug problem. “There are two possible solutions,” she says. “You can legalize drugs which would take the crime element out of it, Or you can turn the army loose and kill a lot of innocent people. It’s a terrible thing even to contemplate. But what else can you do?” Decriminalizing drugs, she argues, might eliminate the presence of schoolyard pushers. “If someone wants to be a dope-head and conk out and kill himself, that’s his business, but at least nobody will be selling it to kids.”
On a lighter note, Dina is eager to discuss her latest effort, Caddyshack II (above with Robert Stack), starring ex-rabbi comic Jackie Mason, who replaced Rodney Dangerfield in the leading role. She thinks the sequel is better than the original. “Jackie has a vulnerability that is very appealing. You just want to hug him and say ‘Oh, you poor thing.’” Their relationship in the film is far less affectionate: he tries to run her over with a bulldozer.
Looking extraordinarily well for a grandmother in her sixties, Dina Merrill is preparing for her most challenging job yet. One of three partners in Greenroom Enterprises, an independent production company, Dina has optioned the film rights to Brooke Astor’s novel The Last Blossom on the Plum Tree, and intends to play the lead character, Emily. William Norwich, the Daily News society columnist, has written the treatment, and considers it “a thrilling project” that could “be the role of Dina Merrill’s career.”
In a world where fame, fortune, and talent often destroy those who possess them, Dina Merrill has come through her remarkable life virtually unscathed, unlike her uncle’s wife, Barbara Hutton (below), who squandered her vast fortune in search of love, drugs and sex. “A lot of people from my particular background go bonkers around the edges,” she says, in her typically unpretentious way. “Maybe because I had parents who had a good sense of direction, I’ve landed with both feet on the ground. I had a fairy tale childhood, true. But it didn’t mean I wasn’t taught how to live within certain boundaries.”
Sadness did strike her family, however, when her second son David, a juvenile diabetic, died at 23 in a boating accident. She’s been an active supporter of the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation for many years.
“Blessed with very good health,” Dina is a great sports enthusiast. She plays tennis and golf, and loves to go skiing, snorkeling, hiking and “frog fishing.” She keeps fit by avoiding “too many eggs and red meat,” and “walking rapidly” all over town. She never takes an elevator unless she’s going above the sixth floor.
So if you see an impeccably dressed, elegant blonde running up the stairs of your building, don’t worry about giving her a hand; it’s just Dina Merrill going about her business. 
Postscript: After her divorce with Robertson was finalized, Dina Merrill married actor and investment banker Ted Hartley in 1989 (seen above, thanks to DPC). According to Wikipedia, they purchased RKO Studios (renamed RKO Pavilion) in which he serves as chairman while she is a vice chairperson and creative director. The studio, which they still run, has produced such films as Milk & Money (1996) and the remake of Mighty Joe Young (1998). She continues to appear in film and television, sponsor charities, and is coming up next month on her 83rd (some sources say 85th) birthday.
