‘Love of Life’ director Larry Auerbach dies at 91

Emmy award-winning director Larry Auerbach, the man behind the long-running soap opera ‘Love of Life’, has passed away due to complications of glioblastoma. He was 91.
Auerbach died last evening in La Jolla, California. He is survived by his wife Gale and their son Scott, reported Variety. Auerbach helped to evolve daytime dramas from short, 15-minute live broadcasts to hour-long taped productions. He began directing ‘Love of Life’, one of the longest-running TV shows in history in 1951 and remained until the hit soap went off air in 1980.
Auerbach directed the likes of Warren Beatty, Dana Delany, Christopher Reeve, Roy Scheider, Jon Voight and Jessica Walter during the show’s nearly three decade run. The TV trailblazer began his career in the late 1940s in Chicago, where he was a stage manager on such early shows as ‘Kukla, Fran and Ollie’, ‘Studs’ Place’ and the daytime drama ‘Hawkins Fal
He sat on the director’s chair for more than four decades on many New York soap operas, including ‘As the World Turns’, ‘Another World’ and ‘All My Children’ and ‘One Life to Live’, for which he won a Daytime Emmy. Auerbach also served as the Directors Guild of America’s national Vice President and sat on its national board. (PTI)