Dina Merrill Hartley Collection

Nedenia Marjorie Hutton, was born December 29, 1925 to the Post Cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post and Wall Street broker Edward Francis (E.F.) Hutton. Nedenia (who went by Deenie to family and friends) was the only child Post and Hutton shared together. Nedenia had three half siblings, two half-sisters on her mother’s side, Adelaide Close Riggs and Eleanor Post Barzin, and a half-brother on her father’s side, Halcourt Horton Hutton, who died before Nedenia was born. As a child, Nedenia and her parents split their time living in New York, their Palm Beach estate Mar-a-Lago, Camp Huttridge (later renamed Topridge) in the Adirondacks, and their yacht the Sea Cloud. Nedenia’s parents divorced when she was ten. Her mother remarried to Joseph E. Davies, a US lawyer and diplomat. Davies acted as the US ambassador to Russia, Belgium and Luxemburg from 1938-1941. Nedenia and her mother joined Davies and lived in the US Embassy in Brussels, Belgium during that time.

As an adult Nedenia became an actress. It was at this time she assumed her stage name Dina Merrill. She began acting in 1945 and in the late 1950s and 1960s she was marketed as “Hollywood’s next Grace Kelly”. She had numerous roles in film and television over several decades. Later in life Nedenia focused more heavily on philanthropy. She helped establish the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation in 1970, served for as a presidential appointee to the board of trustees of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, was a trustee of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, and was a member of the board of the Marjorie Merriweather Post Foundation, which operated the Hillwood Estate, Museum, and Gardens, which was once her mother’s estate.

Nedenia was married three times. She first married in 1946 becoming Nedenia Rumbough. She married Stanley M. Rumbough Jr., an heir to the Colgate-Palmolive fortune. Together the Rumboughs had three children: Nedenia Colgate Rumbough; David Post Rumbough; and Stanley Rumbough III. Rumbough and Nedenia divorced in 1966. Later that year she married her second husband, actor Cliff Roberts and her name changed to Nedenia Roberts. The Roberts had one child together, Heather Robertson. Merrill and Robertson divorced in 1986. In 1989 Nedenia married producer Ted Hartley, and her name changed to Nedenia Hartley. The Hartleys were married until Nedenia’s death on May 22, 2017.