Dina Merrill

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dina_Merrill

Dina Merrill was an American actress and socialite.

Early life

Merrill was born Nedenia Marjorie Hutton in New York City, the only child of Post Cereals heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post and her second husband, Wall Street stockbroker Edward Francis Hutton. She was educated at The George Washington University.

Career

When she told her father she wanted to become an actress on the New York stage, he was outraged. He did not want the "good name" of Hutton paraded on the Great White Way. She asked her father who he disliked more than anyone else in the world . He said Charlie Merrill, the founder of Wall Street competitor Merrill Lynch and thus Nedenia Marjorie Hutton became Dina Merrill.

Merrill acted in twenty-two motion pictures, including Desk Set with Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, The Sundowners, Don't Give Up the Ship, Caddyshack II, I'll Take Sweden with Bob Hope, The Young Savages with Burt Lancaster, A Nice Little Bank That Should Be Robbed with Mickey Rooney, Catch Me If You Can, Operation Petticoat with Cary Grant (who had previously been married to her cousin, Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton) and Tony Curtis, The Courtship of Eddie's Father with Glenn Ford and Ron Howard, Butterfield 8 with Elizabeth Taylor, A Wedding with Desi Arnaz, Jr. and Carol Burnett, True Colors with John Cusack and The Player with Tim Robbins and Whoopi Goldberg.

Merrill appeared regularly on television in the 1960s, including a guest role in James Franciscus's The Investigators on CBS in 1961 and on the NBC medical drama The Eleventh Hour in the role of Rita Hall in the 1962 episode entitled "Everybody Knows You Left Me". Another NBC medical drama Dr. Kildare (1961–1966) saw her guest star as the adult daughter of series regular Raymond Massey in his role as Dr. Gillespie, mentor to the eponymous Dr. Kildare, played by Richard Chamberlain. In 1966, she appeared as extra special guest villainess Calamity Jan on Batman alongside husband Cliff Robertson as her on-screen husband Shame. In 1969 she co-starred with Dean Jagger, Fernando Lamas and Joseph Cotten in the made-for-television suspense film The Lonely Profession. She appeared as a What's My Line? Mystery Guest on the popular Sunday night CBS program, and later appeared on the panel of the syndicated version of that game show.

Her legitimate theater credits include the 1983 Broadway revivial of the Rogers & Hart musical On Your Toes starring Russia prima ballerina and emmigree, Natalia Makarova.

The actress has been married three times. Her first husband was Stanley M. Rumbough, Jr., an heir to the Colgate-Palmolive toothpaste fortune and entrepreneur (married 1946, divorced 1966). They had three children, Stanley Hutton Rumbough, David Post Rumbough (1950–1973) and Nedenia ("Nina") Colgate Rumbough. Her second husband was the American actor Cliff Robertson (married 1966, divorced 1986); they had one child, Heather Merriweather Robertson (1969–2007). She has six grandchildren: Denia and Welyn Craig, David Colgate (Cole), Allegra Hutton, Siena Post, and Kiera Basten Rumbough. In 1989, she married the former actor Ted Hartley. In 1991, Merrill and Hartley merged their company Pavilion Communications with RKO to form RKO Pictures, which owns the copyright to the films and intellectual property of the former RKO Radio Pictures movie studio. She appeared in the rotating cast of the Off-Broadway staged reading of Wit & Wisdom.[2]

Merrill is a presidential appointee to the Board of Trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a trustee of the Eugene O'Neill Theater Foundation, a vice president of the New York City Mission Society.

She served on the board of directors and the compensation committee of Lehman Brothers for 18 years until 2007.

aka Dina Merrill, stage and screen actress

1st husband Stanley Maddox Rumbough-married 1946, divorced 1966

2nd husband Clifford Parker Robertson III (Cliff Robertson, actor)-married 1966, divorced 1986

3rd husband Ted Hartley-married 1989

Merrill was born in New York City on December 29, 1923, although for many years her year of birth was given as 1925. She is the only child of Post Cereals heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post and her second husband, the Wall Street stockbroker Edward Francis Hutton. Merrill had two older half-sisters, Adelaide Breevort (Close) Hutton (July 26, 1908 – December 31, 1998) and Eleanor Post (Close) Hutton (December 3, 1909 – November 27, 2006), by her mother's first marriage, to Edward Bennett Close (grandfather of actress Glenn Close). Merrill attended George Washington University in Washington, D.C., for one term, then dropped out and enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City.[6] She received a lifetime achievement award from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in April 2005.

On advice from her half-sister's (then) husband, she adopted the stage name Dina Merrill, borrowing from Charles E. Merrill, a famous stockbroker like her father. Merrill made her debut on the stage in the play The Mermaid Singing in 1945. During the late 1950s and 1960s, Merrill was believed to have intentionally been marketed as a replacement to Grace Kelly, and in 1959 she was proclaimed "Hollywood's new Grace Kelly". Merrill's film credits include Desk Set (1957), A Nice Little Bank That Should Be Robbed (1958), Don't Give Up the Ship (1959), Operation Petticoat (1959, with Cary Grant, who had been married to her cousin, Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton), The Sundowners (1960), Butterfield 8 (1960), The Young Savages (1961), The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1963), I'll Take Sweden (1965), The Greatest (1977), A Wedding (1978), Just Tell Me What You Want (1980), Anna to the Infinite Power (1983), Twisted (1986), Caddyshack II (1988), Fear (1990), True Colors (1991), The Player (1992), Suture (1993) and Shade (2003). She also appeared in made-for-TV movies, such as Seven in Darkness (1969), The Lonely Profession (1969), Family Flight (1972) and The Tenth Month (1979). Merrill appeared regularly as a guest star on numerous television series in the 1960s, notably as a villain, "Calamity Jan," in two 1968 episodes of Batman alongside then-husband Cliff Robertson. She also made guest appearances on Bonanza, The Love Boat, and The Nanny, as Maxwell Sheffield's disapproving and distant British mother. Her stage credits include the 1983 Broadway revival of the Rodgers & Hart musical On Your Toes, starring Russian prima ballerina Natalia Makarova. In 1991, she appeared in the rotating cast of the off-Broadway staged reading of Wit & Wisdom.

In 1991, Merrill and her third husband, Ted Hartley, merged their company, Pavilion Communications, with RKO to form RKO Pictures (which owns the copyright to the films and intellectual property of RKO Radio Pictures movie studio).

Merrill has been married three times. In 1946 she wed Stanley M. Rumbough, Jr., an heir to the Colgate-Palmolive toothpaste fortune and an entrepreneur. They had three children before they divorced in 1966: Nedenia Colgate Rumbough David Post Rumbough (d. 1973) Stanley M. Rumbough III Later in 1966 she wed Oscar-winning actor Cliff Robertson, with whom she had: Heather Robertson (d. 2007) In 1989 she married former actor Ted Hartley. Two of Merrill's four children predeceased their parents – David died in a boating accident in 1973; Heather died of cancer in 2007.

She is a presidential appointee to the Board of Trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a trustee of the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, and a vice president of the New York City Mission Society. In 1980, Merrill joined the board of directors of her father's E. F. Hutton & Co., continuing on the board of directors and the compensation committee of Lehman Brothers when it acquired Hutton, for over 18 years.