How much is Dina Merrill worth?
| Net Worth: | $4.9 billion |
|---|---|
| Profession: | Professional actress |
| Date of Birth: | December 29, 1923 |
| Country: | United States of America |
| Height: | 1.73 m |
About Dina Merrill
Merrill is considered to have been marketed as a successor for Grace Kelly during the late 1950s and 1960s, and in 1959, she was called “Hollywood’s new Grace Kelly.” During this time period, Merrill was also known as “Hollywood’s new Grace Kelly.”
Merrill was born on December 29th, 1923 in New York City; but, for a significant portion of her life, her date of birth was reported to be December 9th, 1925. She was the only child of Marjorie Merriweather Post, the heiress to Post Cereals, and Wall Street stockbroker Edward Francis Hutton, the founder of E. F. Hutton & Co. She was the only child of her mother and her second husband.
She took the stage name Dina Merrill on the recommendation of her half-husband sister’s at the time, Charles E. Merrill, who was also a successful stockbroker like her father. Dina Merrill is a borrowing from Charles E. Merrill. In 1945, Merrill made her first appearance on stage in the production of the play The Mermaid Singing.
1946 was the year that she tied the knot with Stanley M. Rumbough Jr., an entrepreneur and heir to the Colgate-Palmolive toothpaste company. Before getting a divorce in 1966, they welcomed three children into the world: Nedenia Colgate Rumbough, David Post Rumbough, and Stanley Rumbough, III. Later on in that year, she tied the knot with actor Cliff Robertson, and the couple went on to have a daughter together named Heather Robertson. In 1986, the couple finalized their divorce.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Merrill appeared as a regular contestant or panelist on a number of game and panel shows broadcast on network television. These shows included Match Game, To Tell the Truth, What is My Line, and Hollywood Squares.
During the 1960s, Merrill had guest appearances on a number of different television series, including two episodes of Batman in 1968, in which she portrayed the villain Calamity Jan with her then-husband Cliff Robertson. She also appeared as Susannah Clauson in two episodes of Bonanza, as well as episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour titled “Bonfire” (1962), The Investigators, The Bold Ones, and Wagon Train (1964).
Desk Set (1957), A Nice Little Bank That Should Be Robbed (1958), Do not 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), and Butterfield 8 were some of Merrill’s other film credits. Merrill passed away in 2002.
Merrill was a trustee of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, a presidential appointee to the board of trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and a vice president of the New York City Mission Society. All of these positions were held simultaneously. Merrill Hutton joined the board of directors of her family’s business, E. F. Hutton & Co., in the year 1980. She continued to serve on the board and the pay committee of Lehman Brothers after the latter company purchased Hutton and did so for nearly 18 years.
Her marriage to the producer Ted Hartley took place in 1989. Merrill and her third husband, Ted Hartley, formed RKO Pictures in 1991 through the merger of their firm, Pavilion Communications, with RKO. RKO Pictures is the company that currently controls the intellectual property of the RKO Radio Pictures movie studio.
Her resume includes a role in the 1983 Broadway revival of the Rodgers and Hart musical On Your Toes. Natalia Makarova, a prima ballerina from Russia, played the lead role in the production. She had a role in the rotating cast of the off-Broadway staged reading of Wit & Wisdom that took place in the year 1991. In 1994, Merrill was presented with the Women’s International Center (WIC) Living Legacy Award,and in April of 2005, the American Academy of Dramatic Arts presented her with a lifetime achievement award for her work in the field.
Merrill passed away on May 22, 2017, at the age of 93, in the comfort of her home in East Hampton, New York. She had been diagnosed with dementia with Lewy bodies for quite some time.
