DINA MERRILL

(29 December 1923 - 22 May 2017)

American actress Dina Merrill was born into wealth, her father being a Wall Street financier, her mother heiress to a cereal fortune. As in life, so in movies, for Dina Merrill always played elegant women from the top shelf of society. Stunning to look at with her high cheek bones, she lifted any part off the floor and placed it on another level. Merrill originally had no desire to act but changed her mind and studied the American  Academy  of Dramatic Arts, did some summer stock and eventually reached Broadway, staying in theatre for some ten years. Married to Stanley Rumbough, the Colgate-Palmolive heir, she stopped acting to bring up her family. Back to work from 1955 she entered television, including two memorable appearances on The Phil Silvers Show (Sgt Bilko). Her first film was Desk Set (1957) with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, and she was in other comedies including Operation Petticoat, with Cary Grant and Tony Curtis, while also appearing on TV. More dramatic roles came her way in  Butterfield 8,  The Sundowners  and The Young Savages. She graced The Courtship of Eddie’s Father with young Ron(ny) Howard but for the most part it was TV virtually all the way, including spoof western episodes of Batman playing Calamity Jan with her then husband Cliff Robertson as Shame. Apart from the TV shows, Dina Merrill was in The Greatest, Tom Gries’s biopic on Ali, while Robert Altman cast her in A Wedding and The Player. She was in Sidney Lumet’s Just Tell Me What You Want, Herbert Ross’s True Colors, Disney’s remake of Mighty Joe Young and Peter Hyam’s remake of the 1956 Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (2009), her last appearance. With her third husband, actor and investment banker Ted Hartley, she bought the RKO studio, becoming allegedly the richest actress in the world but a great benefactor of charities as well. She had four children.

MICHAEL DARVELL