'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 Falls'.

Following a short stint on 'Zoo Parade', a live program from the Chicago Zoo with Marlon Perkins, Auerbach became the first director of NBC's 'Watch Mr Wizard'.
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. He was named a DGA Honorary Life Member in 2004.
DGA president Paris Barclay released a statement on 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," he added.