Soap Opera Digest, December 2, 1987, Vol. 12, No. 26

"Remember, Larry, You're Selling Soap!"
by Robert Rorke

"I have always felt that a big part of this business is publicity. I would rather just do what I do and let you people take a look at it and decide, 'I like or I don't like it.' I'll talk about that. But when there's not much to talk about, to sit around and take pictures or redefine the word hot, I think that's a lot of....

"I've always worked on the outside. That's the only way I've been able to keep what little sanity I have left. I can't, to this day, think of this thing as anything more than a part-time job and it's just not and, I mean, when am I going to wake up? There have been times when I've gone like a month of thirteen hours a day, but I still say, 'It's a part-time job.' It's better than driving a cab or waiting tables or the first civilian job actors have to take.

"I can't tell you how many times Ed Trach (Procter and Gamble's executive in charge of soaps) has sat me down and said, 'Larry, what we're trying to do here is sell soap and don't forget that. Our primary objective is to sell soap. Remember: our job is to sell the products.' It seems to me that if you're going to talk about television, that's what you've got to talk about. Everything else is subject to that overriding rule, whatever it may be. Someone ought to write it out in Latin and chisel it in over every studio.

"Television is the great promise that has gone sour on everybody. It's the greatest advertising thing that ever came along, but that's about all it's become.

"I have input and I want input into how the story's told and how it unfolds simply from a motivation standpoint or a logic standpoint. That's always been my fight here-- logic and motivation. Otherwise, I don't care what they write. They can have me falling out of the sky, I don't care, but there's got to be motivation, there's got to be logic.

"I would like to think that my reputation was one of my own person. I'm not out to hurt anybody and I will definitely chip in and help where I can if I think it's right, but if it's not right I don't get too concerned about it. I guess my reputation is...not one of a really swell guy. It's more of 'I think you're going to have to deal with Larry, you may run into fire with Larry.'"