Not long ago, Actress Dina Merrill, 41, discovered that her delicate skin was creasing into fine wrinkles at a rate disconcerting to any professional beauty. For advice on what to do, she turned to someone who has been the envy of fashionable women for nearly 60 years: her mother, Marjorie Merriweather Post. Mamma gave her the name of a doctor whom she consults on similar matters. She may also have reminded Dina of her own prescription: a lifelong devotion to simple food, lots of exercise and plenty of rest.
At 79, Marjorie Merriweather Post Close Hutton Davies May is still slender and pridefully erect—but she is far more than merely a remarkably handsome woman. She is heiress to a food fortune of well over $100 million, a celebrated hostess and philanthropist, an avid horticulturist, antiquary, boxing enthusiast and square-dance fancier. In Palm Beach (where she winters), the Adirondacks (where she summers) and Washington, D.C. (where she spends the spring and fall), Mrs. Post is a grande dame of high society. "Everything she touches turns to beauty," says Lady Bird Johnson.
Unusual Among the Rich. Six nations and 30 associations have given her medals or awards for her charitable work. She has donated generously to the Salvation Army, the Red Cross and many political candidates of both parties, as well as more than $1,000,000 to Washington's National Symphony. She is the prime angel of two colleges (Washington's Mount Vernon Junior College, her alma mater, and C.W. Post College, which occupies one of her former estates in Greenvale, N.Y.). The fraternity boys at C. W. Post, whom she treats to fun-filled weekends at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington, call her "Mumsy." In a book about Palm Beach,
John Ney, sometime social historian, wrote: "She is most unusual among the well-heeled in that she has no sense of guilt about the possession of money. She lives, moves and spends like a queen —and, unlike most people with money, she would be somebody without it."
When Mrs. Post attends a party, Palm Beach does little but prepare for the event weeks in advance. Last week, resplendent in a white and silver gown trimmed in turquoise, she opened the resort's charity-ball season by attending the Red Cross's 1967 international gala. Among her guests were no fewer than ten of Washington's liveliest or most sought-after diplomatic couples, including the ambassadors (and their wives) of India, Japan, France and Morocco.
Dad Did If. What has made her the driving, well-organized person that she is? "My father," she replies, without a moment's pause.