MARJORIE MERRIWEATHER POST~MAR A LAGO Post married four times. - TopicsExpress

MARJORIE MERRIWEATHER POST~MAR A LAGO Post married four times. In 1905, she married investment banker Edward Bennett Close of Greenwich, Connecticut and divorced in 1919. Their eldest daughter, Adelaide, married three times, to Thomas Wells Durant, Merrall MacNeille, and Augustus Riggs. Their second daughter, Eleanor Post Close, later known in the media as Eleanor Post Hutton, married six times, to film director Preston Sturges, Etienne Marie Robert Gautier, George Curtis Rand, Hans Habe, Owen D. Johnson (son of author Owen Johnson), and orchestral conductor Leon Barzin. (Via his second marriage, Edward Bennett Close would become the paternal grandfather of actress Glenn Close.) Post married for a second time, in 1920, financier Edward Francis Hutton. In 1923, he became the chairman of the board of the Postum Cereal Company, and they developed a larger variety of food products, including Birdseye Frozen Foods. The company became the General Foods Corporation in 1929. Post and Hutton divorced in 1935. They had one child, Nedenia Marjorie Hutton, better known as actress Dina Merrill. In 1935, Post married her third husband, Joseph E. Davies, a Washington, D.C. lawyer. Before the couple divorced in 1955, they lived in the Soviet Union from 1937 to 1938. In 1951, the house (the original Hillwood) in which they resided in Brookville, L.I., New York, was sold to Long Island University for USD $200,000. It became C.W. Post College in 1954. Her final marriage, in 1958, was to Herbert A. May, a wealthy Pittsburgh businessman and the former Master of Fox Hounds of The Rolling Rock Hunt Club in Ligonier, Pennsylvania. That marriage ended in divorce in May 1964 and she subsequently reclaimed the name Marjorie Merriweather Post. Designed by Joseph Urban, Mar-A-Lago was willed in 1973 to the U.S. Government as a retreat for Presidents and visiting foreign dignitaries. The mansion was not however used for this purpose, prior to being declared a National Historic Landmark in 1980. It was purchased by Donald Trump in 1985. Some of Posts jewelry bequeathed to the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., is displayed in the Harry Winston exhibit. Pieces in the collection include the Napoleon Necklace and the Marie Louise Diadem (a 275 ct. [55g] diamond-and-turquoise necklace and tiara set that Napoleon I gave to his second wife, Empress Marie Louise); a pair of diamond earrings set with pear shapes, weighing 14 ct.(2.8g) and 20 ct. (4g), once belonging to Marie Antoinette; the Blue Heart Diamond, a 30.82 ct. (6.164g) blue-heart diamond ring; and an emerald-and-diamond necklace and ring, once belonging to Mexican emperor Max Nelson. She funded a U.S. Army hospital in France during World War I, and, decades later, the French government awarded her the Legion of Honor. In 1971, she was among the first three recipients of the Silver Fawn Award, presented by the Boy Scouts of America. The Merriweather Post Pavilion, an outdoor concert venue in Columbia, Maryland, is named for her.