Star of South Florida stage and television

Acker — the vivacious actress, teacher, author, dancer, artistic director, producer and groundbreaking union leader who helped transform South Florida theater — died Sunday after a lengthy battle with cancer, her granddaughter confirmed Monday.

With a talent for light comedy and musicals, Acker once was one of the busiest actresses in the state, appearing at nearly every large and small venue across the region. Yet she became as well known to later generations as the creator, executive producer and host of a series of public-television interview shows that championed the arts for 32 years.

But her legacy has as much to do with her offstage work. Acker was the first female president of the local chapter of the American Federation of TV and Radio Artists and served on the national board, and she became the first Actors’ Equity Liaison for the State of Florida. She created and paid for the region’s first casting hotline — on an answering machine — to help her colleagues find opportunities. Later, she began a half-price ticket program she dubbed “Ticket Madness” based in book stores and that evolved into WLRN’s Cultural Connection.

The longtime Hallandale Beach resident died about 6 a.m. Sunday at Aventura Hospital and Medical Center after radiation treatments Thursday for pancreatic cancer, which she had fought for about six years. She was 88. Her son, Mitch, was flying back from Indonesia, so funeral arrangements have not been announced.

Acker had seen and been a player in the region’s evolution from primarily dinner theaters with few Equity actors to an explosion of risk-taking venues and a phalanx of Equity performers. She was conscious of being one of the last of a particular generation of Florida theater artists.

Referring to her entire career as much as her appearance in the Coconut Grove Playhouse’s “Night of the Iguana” directed by Tennessee Williams, she said, “I’ve been around a long time, and I was very fortunate. I had opportunities… I was in the right time and the right place. Things like that are important.”

Acker’s resume encompasses scores of stage, film and television assignments and more than 250 commercials, a talent she taught to many students and that served as the basis of her first book, “The Secrets To Auditioning for Commercials.” She also compiled a book of her ceIris lebrity interviews, “So, What Got You Where You Are Today.”

Her stage credits feature performances alongside newcomers and celebrities at the Ruth Foreman Theatre, the Coconut Grove Playhouse, Hollywood Playhouse, Royal Palm Dinner Theatre and the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theater, even the Manhattan Theater Club and Grossingers resort.

Her career in local television began when a WLRN executive approached her about doing program focused on the local arts scene. She quipped that she had performed on programs back in New York, but she had never hosted a TV show before — but she assumed she could learn. The first shows were acting classes with other teachers.

Then, her national contacts, along with the help of press agent Charlie Cinnamon, fueled the guest list for “On Stage With Iris Acker.” She nabbed one-onone interviews with virtually every famous name coming through the region, including Chita Rivera, Valerie Harper, Estelle Getty, Phyllis Diller and Hal Linden, whom she often noted was her first boyfriend.

Eleven years later, the program moved to WXEL, then Comcast. For the past five years, the renamed “Spotlight on the Arts” has been broadcast as a multi-host panel interview like “The View” on BECON-TV, the station owned and operated by the Broward County school district.

But the programs she produced intentionally brought needed visibility to smaller, emerging local theater companies and artists in a wide range of disciplines from puppetry to drum circles.

Deborah Kerr, past chair of the Broward Cultural Council, recalled, “Iris was so welcoming to new groups. She invited me on her show when we were just starting the Fort Lauderdale Film Festival some 30 plus years ago when I was the chair.”

When film companies came to South Florida, she won small roles in movies such as “Cocoon: The Return.” Her success at commercials flourished, as well, with gigs selling vacuum cleaners with Tony Randall and Mr. Coffee products with Joe DiMaggio.

In a recent conversation, Acker spoke of her run as an interviewer, but reflected her attitude toward her whole career: “Wasn’t I lucky? Wasn’t I lucky?”

Survivors include her sons, Mitch Acker of the Virgin Islands, and Robert Acker of Kendall; grandchildren Jillian, Andrew and Erinn of the Atlanta area; and four great-grandchildren. Her husband died in 2010.