Dina Merrill, Heiress Turned Actress Who Grew Up in Trump’s Future Mar-a-Lago Estate, Dies at 93
Dina Merrill, an heiress turned actress who starred in classic movies such as 1960’s “BUtterfield 8” and 1963’s “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” died Monday in East Hampton, New York, the New York Times reported. She was 93.
Her death was confirmed by , Stanley H. Rumbough, who said she suffered from Lewy Body dementia.
The daughter of Wall Street giant E.F. Hutton and cereal scion Marjorie Merriweather Post, Merrill grew up surrounded by wealth.
According to the Times, she spent up to half of each year as a child on the family’s giant yacht, the Sea Cloud, and the other half on a 115-room estate in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, that was renovated into a private club after its purchase by future U.S. President Donald Trump in 1985. (Ivanka Trump shared the same childhood bedroom suite, the Times wrote.)
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Merrill defied her father’s wishes by becoming an actress, making her Broadway debut in 1945’s “The Mermaids Singing.” But she was 34 by the time she got her first movie role — in the 1957 Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy comedy “The Desk Set” — because she took time out to raise three children with her first husband, the Colgate-Palmolive heir Stanley M. Rumbough Jr. (The couple divorced in 1966.)
But then she landed a series of high-profile roles in Hollywood, as the daughter of a Wall Street banker in 1959’s “What Makes Sammy Run” and as jilted wives in “BUtterfield 8” opposite Liz Taylor and “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” with Glenn Ford and Shirley Jones.
Other noteworthy roles included 1959’s “Operation Petticoat,” 1960’s “The Sundowners,” 1961’s “the Young Savages” and Robert Altman’s 1992 Hollywood comedy “The Player.”
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In 1966, Merrill married actor Cliff Robertson — though they divorced in 1989. She then married actor turned film producer Ted Hartley.
Merrill was a moderate Republican who served as vice chair for the Republican Pro-Choice Coalition and vice president of the New York Mission Society, the Times wrote. She also contributed heavily to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
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