As reported by Anders Fredriksson Zend_View_Helper_Action does not maintain state between called action and calling action thus disabling the ability to autorender from the calling action. This problem emerges when you call the action() view helper from within an action controller. The calling Action Controller will loose the ability to auto-render since the state of the viewRenderer is not fully resumed by the action() view helper. More specifically, _noRender becomes set to true when the called action controller is dispatched and executed. -ralph