Soap Director Larry Auerbach Passed Away

I usually don't do in memoriam posts for behind the scenes personnel, but am making an exception for Larry Auerbach. He spent the majority of his career in soap operas. Click here to read his obituary from the DGA.

Larry Auerbach became a New York City based soap opera director starting in 1951 with the birth of "Love of Life", though he worked in other famous programs of other genres prior like Mr. Wizard. He was with LOL its entire run and directed thousands of episodes until it went off the air in 1980. (The video clip of him shutting down the Love of Life set is included in the below video of the final episode of LOL and is available on YouTube.com - the CBS obituary discusses this moment.)

After that he worked at other NYC soaps until he retired in the late 90s these included Another World, All My Children, As the World Turns and One Life to Live. From checking my soap opera history books, he was also nominated for direction nearly every year in the 80s: 1980 for LOL, 1981, 1982 , 1983 for AMC, and 1984 (won) 1985, 1986, 1988, 1989, for OLTL. He was at AW and ATWT after he stopped working at ABC if I recall correctly.

To end this, I wanted to share a quote from Mr. Auerbach from the 1995 book: "The Box" by Jeff Kisseloff "I still like going into the studio. I hope there's a studio up there when the time comes."