Toby Wing; MGM Dancer Appeared in 38 Films

Toby Wing, the original Goldwyn Girl “with a face like the morning sun” who wore diamond rings from a string of celebrated fiances before marrying pioneering aviator Henry Tindall “Dick” Merrill, has died. She was 85.

Wing, epitome of the platinum blond beauty embraced by 1930s Hollywood, died Friday at her home in Mathews, Va.

The saucy sex symbol who began her career in Samuel Goldwyn’s 1931 “Palmy Days” spent only a decade before the cameras. But in that short span, she appeared in 38 motion pictures, often in memorable moments.

“Palmy Days,” starring Eddie Cantor and George Raft, was praised for Busby Berkeley’s overhead camera shots, a precursor to his musical productions. As a Goldwyn Girl, the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer stable of dancers, Wing appeared in many more Berkeley extravaganzas. In 1998, she was one of the dancers interviewed for the television special “Busby Berkeley: Going Through the Roof.”

Wing also worked at Warner Bros. and Paramount, often with Cantor and Berkeley. In Berkeley’s original “42nd Street” of 1933, she was the beauty costumed in a white fox bra to whom Dick Powell warbled “Young and Healthy.”

Among her other films were “Murder at the Vanities” in 1934, starring Ida Lupino and Jack Oakie, and “True Confession” in 1937, with Fred MacMurray, Carole Lombard and John Barrymore.

Although Wing dazzled the camera wherever she appeared, her roles were brief and often uncredited. She still enjoyed enduring popularity and got her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

She reigned as America’s favorite pinup along with Jean Harlow, who died in 1937, and Betty Grable through World War II. At one point, Wing boasted more fan mail than Claudette Colbert or Marlene Dietrich.

And then there were the suitors--Maurice Chevalier, Alfred Vanderbilt, Franklin Roosevelt Jr., Jackie Coogan and wealthy Toronto playboy Erskine Eaton. When Army pilot John T. Helms perished in 1936, Wing mourned him and soon announced, “I have really given up falling in love with men! Oh, yes! My career is now to be my life.”

But a few months later, she became involved with Merrill, more than 20 years her senior. Merrill, who in 1936 became the first pilot to make a round-trip trans-Atlantic flight and went on to be senior pilot for Eastern Airlines, secretly married Wing in Mexico in 1938.

Wing’s final film was the 1943 “The Marines Come Thru.”

Born Martha Virginia Wing in Amelia Court House, Va., she moved to Hollywood, where her Army officer father, Paul R. Wing, became an assistant director between the two world wars. Because of his involvement in movies, she had a few bit parts in silents as a child.

Adopting the family nickname Toby for her stage name, Wing also appeared occasionally on stage, including the 1938 Cole Porter musical “You Never Know.”

Wing is survived by her sister, Patricia Gill of Gloucester, Va., and two granddaughters.