Mumsy the Magnificent

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.

Charles William Post, a farm-machinery salesman, in 1893 concocted the first batch of Postum out of wheat, molasses and bran on his kitchen stove in Battle Creek, Mich., where he had gone to boost his strength in a sanitarium run by his future rival, John Harvey Kellogg, creator of corn flakes. Post followed Postum up with Grape Nuts and Post Toasties. He taught his only child the business, had her sit in on directors' meetings at the age of eleven, took her along on factory tours (and incidentally taught her boxing). When she married Socialite Edward B. Close in 1905, she brought Father along on the honeymoon to Italy and Egypt. She and Close had two daughters, Adelaide and Eleanor. Marjorie inherited several million dollars, plus control of the Postum Co. She divorced Close in 1919, married Manhattan Stockbroker Edward F. Hutton (Dina's father) a year later. Hutton built the company into General Foods Corp. (JellO, Maxwell House, Yuban, Birds Eye). At last reports, Mrs. Post still held about 7% of the outstanding stock, worth $128 million. The Huttons also built Mar-A-Lago, a 115-room Spanish "cottage" in Palm Beach, and acquired a 350-ft. yacht, but their marriage ran aground. Marjorie in 1935 divorced Hutton on grounds of adultery.

Shortly thereafter, she married Washington Lawyer Joseph E. Davies, who in 1935 became Franklin Roosevelt's ambassador to Moscow. Relying on what she had learned from her art dealer, Lord Duveen, Madame Ambassador began acquiring her extensive collection of czarist icons and chalices when they were put on sale by the Soviet govern-ment at 50 per gram of silver content. Mrs. Post and Davies were divorced in 1955, and she subsequently married and divorced Pittsburgh Industrialist Herbert May. The names of her latest escorts (Hotel Consultant Serge Obolensky, former Secretary of the Navy Fred Korth) provoke speculation in gossip columns, but friends insist that she does not plan to marry again. Her schedule would scarcely leave her time.

Bears & Bulls. Home base for Mrs. Post's constant flurry of house parties and charity benefits is Washington's Hillwood, a 22-room Georgian mansion set on 24 acres overlooking Rock Creek Park. Invitations to Hillwood are only slightly less sought after than those to the White House. The house, already bequeathed to the Smithsonian, is furnished with Gobelin tapestries and Louis XVI furniture (including chairs made for Marie Antoinette). It is surrounded by a garden with plants from Buckingham Palace and Mount Vernon. In the French Regency dining room, guests--including Cabinet Ministers and royalty--eat from Austrian Emperor Franz Josef's gold-plated service. Recently, the White House gratefully accepted Mrs. Post's gift of some of her extra tablecloths. The pleasures are somewhat simpler at Topridge, mountaintop summer hideaway near Saranac Lake, N.Y. Guests are flown in aboard Mrs. Post's 16 passenger Viscount, the Merriweather, then transported by limousine, launch and canopied cable car to her rustic aerie. The living room is furnished with stuffed bears, a cigar-store Indian, beaded rugs, totems, the war bonnets of Sitting Bull and Geronimo--all of which takes two servants four hours to dust. Each guest is assigned a cabin with one butler and one maid.

Typewritten daily and weekly schedules of events are issued, though Mrs. Post says the first rule of the house is "Do whatever you want." (The second is "If there is anything you want and you don't ask for it, it's your own fault.") Days at Topridge are spent in picnicking, canoeing, hiking. Nights are for square-dancing, movie watching, black-tie dinners, and late-night snacks from an icebox stocked with General Foods products. Says one guest, Magnavox Co. Vice President Godfrey Mc-Hugh: "The planning is comparable to the successful management of a large corporation."

Frugging till Dawn. Nowhere is the Post hospitality more exquisite than at Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach. "The only trouble with Palm Beach," cracked White House Aide Robert Kintner, "is that by the time you can afford it, you're too old to enjoy it." The resort enjoyed a considerable revival with the younger international set when John F. Kennedy, son of longtime winter residents, spent a couple of Christmas vacations 'there as President. Now younger socialites seek the more informal social life of Barbados, Hobe Sound, Nassau or Acapulco. Palm Beach is primarily a playground for older Eastern and Mid-western families. Notable among them are Vanderbilts, Phippses, Dodges, Guests and Sanfords. The top social leaders are Mrs. Rose Kennedy and Mrs. Post, and Mar-A-Lago is one of the liveliest places in town.

Guests play golf on Mrs. Post's private, nine-hole course, or the championship course at the Seminole Club. Visitors can also swim in Mrs. Post's pool, at her private beach, or at the hyper-exclusive Bath and Tennis Club. At night, there is often a square dance, and though the music stops at 11 p.m., guests are free to borrow one of the hostess' limousines and cruise into town for frugging at O'Hara's until dawn.

All in all, Mrs. Post's dictum is: "Be useful, be generous, keep busy." What have been the most memorable days of her life? Says she with a smile: "There have been too many of them to single out only a few."

* Like Governor Nelson Rockefeller's wife Happy, who last week was rushed by cab to a hospital at 5 a.m., gave birth to their second son half an hour later. Rocky does not remember the size of the bill he gave the cabbie, but he did not ask for change.

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