The Legendary Prunella Scales: From the Iconic Fawlty Towers to Great Canal Journeys

The celebrated actress Prunella Scales, who died at the age of 93, was regarded as among Britain's most brilliant comedic performers.

Despite an extensive and respected career on stage and screen, she will inevitably be remembered as Sybil Fawlty in the classic 1970s television series, Fawlty Towers.

It was Sybil's mission in life to keep tabs on her "stick insect" husband Basil - portrayed by comedian John Cleese - amid telephone chats fueled by cigarettes with her companion Audrey.

It fell to her to calm visitors who had been shouted at, completely overlooked or, occasionally, throttled by Basil when in one of his more manic moods.

Her unforgettable cackle, extraordinary hairstyle and intense anger were components of a carefully constructed character that ranks as a comic masterpiece.

Although numerous performers would have distanced themselves from excessive identification with a single role, Scales consistently voiced her pleasure in participating of the Fawlty Towers experience.

Early Life and Career Beginnings

The actress born Prunella Margaret Rumney Illingworth was born near Guildford on 22 June 1932.

It was a family deeply in love with the theatre - her mother being, Catherine Scales, an ex-actress who'd given it all up for family life.

Bright and bookish, after wartime evacuation to the Lake District, Prunella attended Moira House Girls School in the coastal town of Eastbourne.

During 1949, she won a scholarship to the prestigious Old Vic drama school and - two years later - obtained a role as a stage management assistant.

This decision angered of her former headmistress in her hometown, who had wished she would seek admission to Cambridge University and wrote to the theatre to express this opinion.

During her theatrical training, Scales was perceived as a developing character performer rather than an obvious Juliet.

"We all wanted to look like Audrey Hepburn," she subsequently informed her chronicler, "but I wasn't attractive and nobody fancied me."

The youthful Prunella also hid her middle-class roots, conscious that directors were beginning to look for authentic working-class realism in their actors.

But she started picking up minor parts in plays, and, during preparations for a part at Worthing's Connaught Theatre, she met actor Andrew Sachs, who would subsequently appear as Manuel, the Spanish waiter, in Fawlty Towers.

There was an early television appearance in the year 1952, as Lydia Bennet in a BBC production of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, which featured Peter Cushing - better known for his horror film performances - as Mr Darcy.

Her initial film appearances followed the next year - in romantic comedy, the film Laxdale Hall, and David Lean's production Hobson's Choice, alongside Charles Laughton.

During the latter 1950s and early 1960s, she was rarely out of work - performing across multiple mediums, including a brief stint as transport worker, character Eileen Hughes, in Coronation Street.

She additionally encountered colleague Timothy West.

Following what she characterized as "a mild Times crossword and Polo mints flirtation", they became a couple, and wed in 1963.

Breakthrough and Iconic Roles

Her major television opportunity came with the series Marriage Lines, a comedy program about recentlyweds, George and Kate Starling.

Scales appeared opposite Richard Briers, at that time a major celebrity in television comedy. The program achieved great success and continued for five seasons.

Subsequently arrived the legendary Fawlty Towers, which propelled her to iconic status.

John Cleese and his then wife, Connie Booth, had presented the initial screenplay of their comedy creation to the broadcasting corporation.

Performer Bridget Turner had been approached to play Sybil Fawlty but she had turned it down and Scales auditioned for the role.

She subsequently recalled that Cleese maintained high standards.

"John, appropriately, demanded strict script adherence, and failure to comply would understandably provoke his irritation."

Only 12 episodes were ever made.

The initial season, which aired in 1975, failed to win huge audiences but, with subsequent episodes, its hilarious mix of absurd pratfalls and awkward circumstances grew in popularity.

Scales carefully considered about how to play Sybil Fawlty, and determined that her character's upbringing had to be inferior to Basil's social standing.

Initially, the creators were unsure about this approach.

"Once they heard the first reading in rehearsal," Scales remembered, "they embraced the concept completely."

Later in her career, she was, all too often, called upon to play stern matriarchs when she desired more glamorous roles.

However when questioned about what she thought was the high point, Scales had no hesitation in selecting Sybil Fawlty.

"The role presented challenges," she insisted, "yet I remain proud of my work." She believed it assisted in bringing the paying public into performance venues.

"I believe that audience familiarity with one performance encourages attendance at others," she expressed.

Later Career and Personal Life

Following Fawlty Towers, Scales maintained her career in television, including a stint as the frumpy Elizabeth Mapp in the series Mapp and Lucia.

Her voice was also regularly heard on radio, notably the BBC Radio 4 sitcom, which later transitioned to TV, and Ladies of Letters, with actress Patricia Routledge, which became an intrinsic part of Woman's Hour.

Scales performed two significant royal characters; as Queen Elizabeth in the BBC production of Alan Bennett's work, and as Queen Victoria in a solo performance that she presented four hundred times.

She once received a letter from a royal protection officer who confessed that when Scales came on stage, he rose to his feet.

"It was a knee-jerk reaction," she clarified. "I was thrilled."

In 1995, she started appearing as Dotty Turnbull in television commercials for the retail chain Tesco - which paid her partly in vouchers.

The advertising series, which ran for nine years, was cited as the biggest factor in propelling it to market leadership in the mid-nineties.

Scales later came in for moderate critique for taking part in the commercial campaign, when she supported an initiative to prevent neighborhood store closures in her area of London.

One of her finest performances came in the production Breaking the Code, the movie concerning the Bletchley Park wartime codebreakers.

She appears as Alan Turing's mother, who embodies a society that criminalized same-sex relationships, an attitude that eventually led to his death.

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