Arlene Lovett
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Arlene Slater (nee Lovett), was a fictional character on the now-cancelled American Soap opera, Love of Life. She was played by actress Birgitta Tolksdorf.
Arlene was the daughter of Carrie Lovett (Peg Murray) and lived with her mother in a modest home in the community of Rosehill, New York. Little was known of Arlene's life before she came into Rosehill, but it was discovered that sometime before her first appearance in 1974, she was married to Ben Harper.
She was also unknowingly allowing him to become a bigamist, because he was marrying Betsy Crawford, who was a friend of her mother's. She was aiming to share in a half-million dollars that Ben was to get from his mother, Meg Dale. However, it was discovered that Meg had amended the rules of his dowry, when she discovered Arlene was still around. She amended the rules to make Ben prove to be a good husband to Betsy for six months.
However, Arlene, despite her vampy ways, was a real decent person underneath, and she wisely divorced Ben. When he confessed all his sins, he took on all the blame, sparing Arlene from any real mortification. Ben eventually went to prison for bigamy.
She became friends with the mentally disturbed David Hart, who had shot his hated father, Jeff Hart, after he caught him raping Cal Aleata. She helped him get through the breakdown he suffered in court and talked him into returning to the sanitarium. (David had been talked into leaving the sanitarium by the conniving Meg who wanted to put him and Cal together, so she could have Rick Latimer all for herself. Once again, Meg's plan failed.)
In 1976, Arlene became a prostitute under loan shark named Ray Slater (Lloyd Battista). She had been seeing a wealthy and married businessman named Ian Russell (Michael Allinson), who was trying to help her by paying for Carrie's medical treatments. However, Ian was found dead, and Arlene was the prime suspect. She was later acquitted.
Arlene and Ray later on fell in love and married. Arlene gave birth to their daughter, April Joy Slater, and after they married, Ray stopped being a loan shark and he and Arlene settled down to marital bliss. They helped out a young woman named Bambi Brewster, and then returned to Rosehill. (It had been noted that the Bambi Brewster storyline which had been written by the show's then headwriter Jean Holloway, who had written in Soap Opera's early days, was possibly one of the factors that had led to Love of Life's cancellation.)
Arlene and Ray were still on the show until almost a year before the cancellation of Love of Life, but was presumed that they remained together in Rosehill and raised their daughter with abundant love; and were finally free from their sordid pasts.
