'Love of Life' Director Larry Auerbach Dead at 91

Larry Auerbach on the set of Love of Life.

Emmy-winning director Larry Auerbach, who worked at daytime soap opera Love of Life during its entire run on CBS, died on Saturday from complications of glioblastoma in La Jolla, California He was 91.

Auerbach 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 Falls.

Following a short stint on Zoo Parade, a live program from the Chicago Zoo with Marlon Perkins, Auerbach went on to become the first director of NBC’s Watch Mr. Wizard.

He began directing Love of Life in 1951 and remained until the show went off the air in 1980. None of the original actors stayed from beginning to end but Auerbach did. He was among those interviewed by Dustin Hoffman for the soap opera comedy,

He went on to direct other New York soap operas, including CBS' As the World Turns, NBC's Another World and ABC's 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. He was named a DGA Honorary Life Member in 2004.

DGA president Paris Barclay released a statement on Saturday following Auerbach's death.

"Larry worked tirelessly, out of love for his guild and his profession, to ensure better working conditions and stronger protection of creative rights for guild members, and he was instrumental in raising the profile of daytime serial directors, the genre to which he dedicated his career," Barclay said in a statement. "He was a dynamo – a strong and powerful voice for our members for decades – and we will miss him greatly."

Auerbach is survived by his wife Gale and their son Scott.

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