Louise Sorel, 86, Is Salem’s Villainess — And She Was Married to ‘The Golden Girls’ Stan

Louise Sorel is best known as iconic Days of Our Lives villainess Vivian Alamain. And while she’s daytime drama-famous for her over-the-top antics, decades before she buried Carly alive and stole Kate and Victor’s embryo, Sorel married The Golden Girls’ Stan in real life.

Fans may know her as the often cold-hearted, clever, conniving, and always eccentric Vivian from Days, but Sorel started her career in the late 1950s/early 1960s with small guest-starring roles in The Doctors, The Defenders, The Fugitive, Bonanza, The Flying Nun, Mannix, and Star Trek.

She continued to play small roles in series such as Hawaii Five-O, Kojak, Trapper John, M.D., Knots Landing, and The Incredible Hulk, eventually landing her first major soap role as Augusta Lockridge on Santa Barbara from 1984 to 1991.

While Sorel was building her career, she was also falling in love. In 1964, the young actress married Herb Edelman. Like Sorel, Edelman spent his early acting years guest-starring on now-iconic television shows such as That Girl, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., and The Flying Nun. He was later cast as Murray the Cop in the 1968 film version of The Odd Couple. The same year, Edelman starred opposite Bob Denver in the CBS sitcom The Good Guys.

By the mid-1980s, Edelman had made a name for himself in the medical drama St. Elsewhere. But he’s best known as Dorothy’s (Bea Arthur) ex-husband Stan Zbornak on The Golden Girls.

Like his Golden Girls character, Edelman was also an ex in real life. He and Sorel divorced in the early 1970s. Sorel married Grey Gardens actor Ken Howard in 1973. The pair divorced two years later.

Vivian Alamain debuted on Days of Our Lives in 1992, nearly two decades after Sorel’s marriages ended. The actress remained a constant presence on the daytime soap until 2000. Over the past 26 years, Sorel has returned to Salem several times. Her most recent appearance was in January of 2026. At the time, she told TV Insider, “It felt comfortable because it’s such a nice group of people. Everybody there is working so hard under such pressure, and they really do their work as best as they can.”

She continued, addressing the end of the fan-favorite Vivian-Ivan pairing, “It was full of life and a certain energy and madness about it that I love. I think Vivian and Ivan were a wonderful add-on to the show. I felt that was a big loss because there was something about that ridiculous relationship that had an edge of humor about it that I think is vital.”

As of now, there is no information on when Sorel will return to Days of Our Lives.