Sharon Acker obit

Sharon Acker, Actress in ‘Point Blank’ and ‘Perry Mason,’ Dies at 87

The Toronto native had a memorable guest turn on 'Star Trek' and starred with Hal Holbrook on 'The Bold Ones' and with Mitchell Ryan on 'Executive Suite.' 

She was not on the list.

Sharon Acker, the Canadian actress who portrayed Lee Marvin’s unfaithful wife in the 1967 neo-noir classic Point Blank and the right-hand woman Della Street opposite Monte Markham on a rebooted Perry Mason in the 1970s, has died. She was 87.

Acker died March 16 in a retirement home in her native Toronto, her daughter Kim Everest, a casting director, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Star Trek fans know Acker for her January 1969 turn as Odona, a desperate woman from an overpopulated planet, on the third-season episode “The Mark of Gideon.”

She also starred on a 1976-77 CBS adaptation of Executive Suite, playing the wife of Mitchell Ryan‘s Dan Walling. (Acker and Ryan assumed the parts performed by William Holden and June Allyson in the 1954 MGM film directed by Robert Wise.)

In John Boorman’s Point Blank, Acker’s character takes up with John Vernon’s Mal Reese after he shoots Walker (Marvin) and leaves him for dead after they rob a courier on Alcatraz. When Walker returns seeking revenge and his share of the loot, he manhandles her and riddles her bed with bullets. 

Seven years after Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason, starring Raymond Burr as the iconic defense lawyer and Barbara Hale as his loyal secretary, concluded its nine-season run, CBS rebooted the series with Markham and Acker in 1973. However, it lasted just 15 episodes before being canceled.

Sharon Eileen Acker was born in Toronto on April 2, 1935, and adopted when she was 9. She attended Davisville Public School, John Fisher Public School and Northern Vocational School, where she studied art and graduated in 1953.

In 1956, she played the teacher Mrs. Stacey on a 1956 CBC adaptation of Anne of Green Gables and joined the Stratford Shakespeare Festival company, starring as Anne Page opposite future Star Trek co-star William Shatner in a production of The Merry Wives of Windsor.

She traveled to Europe to perform with the Stratford company in Henry V and remained there to make her big-screen debut in Lucky Jim (1957), starring Ian Carmichael and Terry-Thomas. British producers John and Ray Boulting called her “freshly appealing” and signed her to a seven-year contact, but she broke things off after getting married and having a child.

Back home, she appeared often on the acclaimed CBC series Festival and in 1961 portrayed Lady MacDuff alongside Sean Connery and Zoe Caldwell on a five-part adaptation of Macbeth, directed by Paul Almond.

Boorman hired her after seeing her on the CBC, and Point Blank marked her first role in the U.S. To promote the film, she and Angie Dickinson (who played her sister in the movie) appeared on the pages of Life magazine in August 1967 modeling “Well-Dressed Moll Styles in Alcatraz.”

After that, she was a welcome sight in guest stints on episodes of The Wild Wild West, Get Smart, It Takes a Thief, Lancer and Star Trek.

Acker was a divorcée who has a brief affair with a businessman (Arthur Hill) in the Canadian drama Don’t Let the Angels Fall (1969), which played in competition at Cannes. She was selected by the Motion Picture Exhibitors of Canada as their Film Star of Tomorrow that year.

And in 1970, she portrayed the wife of Hal Holbrook‘s idealistic Sen. Hays Stowe on the NBC drama The Bold Ones: The Senator.

Acker’s TV résumé also included such series as Alias Smith and Jones, Gunsmoke, Mission: Impossible, Mod Squad, Marcus Welby, M.D., Cannon, Barnaby Jones, The Streets of San Francisco, The Rockford Files, Police Story and Quincy, M.E.

Her last movie was the horror film Happy Birthday to Me (1981), and her final TV appearance came on The Young and the Restless in 1992. She retired from acting in ’94, returned to Canada with her late second husband, Peter Elkington, to live in a cottage in Muskoka, Ontario, and continue her passion for painting and sculpting.

Elkington died in 2001. Survivors include her children, Kim and Gillian; granddaughter Alexis; great-granddaughter Berkeley; and stepchildren Kim and Caitlin.

 

Filmography

 

Movies

Lucky Jim (1957) ... Christine Callaghan

Point Blank (1967) ... Lynne Walker

Waiting for Caroline (1969) ... Emily

The First Time (1969) ... Pamela Williams

Don't Let the Angels Fall (1969) ... Barbara

The Act of the Heart (1970) ... Adele

Happy Birthday to Me (1981) ... Estelle Wainwright

Threshold (1981) ... Tilla Vrain

Television

Anne of Green Gables (1956) ... Mrs. Stacey

The Unforeseen (1960)

Macbeth (1961) ... Lady Macduff

Wojeck (1966) (2 episodes) ... Tony Marlowe

The Wild Wild West "The Night of the Sedgewick Curse" (1968) ... Lavinia Sedgewick

Star Trek ("The Mark of Gideon") (1969)...Odona

It Takes a Thief (1968–1969) (three episodes) ... Dr. Edwina Hopkins

Lancer (1969) ... Tiffany Mumford

A Clear and Present Danger (1970 TV movie) ... Erin Stowe

The Bold Ones: The Senator (1970–1971) ... Ellen Stowe

Alias Smith and Jones (1971) ... Rachel Carlson

Cannon (TV series) (1971) ... Glinda Donaldson

Gunsmoke (1971) ... Tereese Farrell

The F.B.I. (1971)

Cade's County (1971) ... Roseann Claybourne

Love, American Style (1971)

Mission: Impossible (1972) ... Annette (1970) ... Connie Hastings

The Mod Squad (1972)

McMillan & Wife (1972) ... Evie Kendall

Hec Ramsey (1972) ... Nora Muldoon

The Delphi Bureau (1973) ... Sheila

The New Perry Mason (1973–1974) ... Della Street

Marcus Welby, M.D. (1973)

The Stranger (1973) ... Dr. Bettina Cooke

The Hanged Man (1974) ... Carrie Gault

Harry O (1974) ... Andrea Tannehill

Cannon (1975) ... Laura Venner (1974) ... Jill (1971) ... Mrs. Dude

Barnaby Jones (1975) ... Laura Vaner (1975) ... Florence Armstrong (1973) ... Gail Bloom

Our Man Flint: Dead on Target (1976)

Executive Suite (1976) ... Helen Walling

The Streets of San Francisco (1977) ... Ethel Finn (1975) ... Eleanor Jessup

The Hostage Heart (1977) ... Martha Lake

The Love Boat (1978) ... Evelyn

Matt and Jenny (1979) ... Samantha Shelborne

The Rockford Files (1978) Edie Nevitt ... (1979) Adrianna Danielli

Conquest of the Earth (1980)

Stone (1980)

Galactica 1980 (1980) ... Anne

Battles: The Murder That Wouldn't Die (1980 TV movie) ... Jill Spencer

The Incredible Hulk (1980) ... Dr. Louise Olson

Quincy, M.E. (1981) ... Allison Sirella/Mary Latham (1979) ... Fashion Designer Lynne Montgomery (1978) ... Barbara

Flamingo Road (1981)

Shannon (1981)

Off Your Rocker (1982 TV movie) ... Nurse Gloria

Texas (1982) ... Judith Wheeler

The Powers of Matthew Star (1983) ... Evita

Matt Houston (1983)

Trapper John, M.D. (1983) ... Senator Miriam Taylor

Whiz Kids (1984) ... Miriam

Simon & Simon (1985) ... Sandra Jefferson-Delaporte (1981) ... Helena Christian

Crazy Like a Fox (1985)

Knight Rider (1985) ... Sanford

You Again? (1986) ... Loretta Winslow

Murder, She Wrote (1986) episode "Keep the Home Fries Burning" ... Wilhelmina Fraser

Days of Our Lives (1987) ... Pamela Fouchier

Katts and Dog (1988) (3 episodes) ... Alice

Street Legal (1989) ... Jane Morrison

The Young and the Restless (1991–1992) ... Dr. Grace Sundell