Prunella Scales: Beginning with Fawlty Towers to Great Canal Journeys

Prunella Scales, who died at 93 years old, was considered one of Britain's finest comedic performers.

Although a long and distinguished career on stage and screen, her legacy will forever be linked as the unforgettable Sybil Fawlty in the classic 1970s television series, the beloved Fawlty Towers.

Sybil's primary objective throughout her existence to keep tabs on her "stick insect" husband Basil - portrayed by John Cleese - amid telephone chats fueled by cigarettes with her companion Audrey.

It fell to her to calm visitors who had been shouted at, totally ignored or, in some cases, throttled by Basil when during his particularly frenzied episodes.

Her unforgettable cackle, gravity-defying hairdo and intense anger were part of a meticulously crafted persona that stands as a comic masterpiece.

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

Formative Years and Professional Start

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

She belonged to a household profoundly passionate about the theatre - her mother being, Bim Scales, an ex-actress who'd given it all up for family life.

Intelligent and studious, after wartime evacuation to the Lake District, Prunella studied at Moira House Girls School in the coastal town of Eastbourne.

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

This was to the fury of her former headmistress in her hometown, who had wished she would seek admission to Cambridge University and wrote to the theatre to tell them so.

During her theatrical training, Scales had been thought of as a developing character performer instead of an obvious Juliet.

"Everyone aspired to resemble Audrey Hepburn," she later told her chronicler, "however I lacked conventional beauty and attracted no admirers."

Young Prunella concealed her middle-class roots, conscious that directors were beginning to look for authentic working-class realism in their actors.

Nevertheless she began acquiring small roles in plays, and, while rehearsing for a role at Worthing's Connaught Theatre, she met actor Andrew Sachs, who would later star as Manuel, the Spanish waiter, in the famous series.

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 roles in horror movies - as Mr Darcy.

And her first big screen roles followed the next year - in lighthearted romance, the film Laxdale Hall, and David Lean's production Hobson's Choice, alongside the renowned Charles Laughton.

Throughout the latter 1950s and early 1960s, she maintained constant employment - performing across multiple mediums, featuring a brief stint as transport worker, Eileen Hughes, in the popular soap Coronation Street.

She also met fellow actor Timothy West.

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

Career Milestones and Defining Characters

Her big TV break arrived through Marriage Lines, a BBC sitcom about recentlyweds, George and Kate Starling.

Scales performed alongside actor Richard Briers, then one of the biggest stars in TV humor. The show proved hugely popular and ran for five years.

Then came the legendary Fawlty Towers, which elevated her to cultural icon.

John Cleese and his then wife, Connie Booth, had submitted the first script of their comedy creation to the broadcasting corporation.

Performer Bridget Turner had been approached to play Sybil Fawlty but she declined the part and Scales tried out for the character.

She subsequently recalled that Cleese was a hard taskmaster.

"John, quite rightly, was extremely rigorous about learning the script, and if you didn't, he could get quite cross, which was fair enough."

Merely twelve installments were ever made.

The first series, which debuted in 1975, didn't immediately attract massive viewership but, with subsequent episodes, its comedic combination of absurd pratfalls and awkward circumstances grew in popularity.

Scales thought hard about how to play Sybil Fawlty, and determined that her character's upbringing had to be below her husband Basil's.

Initially, John Cleese and his wife were unsure about the treatment.

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

In subsequent years, she was, all too often, requested to portray "dragons" and "old bags" when she hankered after more glamorous roles.

However when questioned about her career pinnacle, Scales had no hesitation in picking Sybil Fawlty.

"The role presented challenges," she maintained, "but I'm still proud of it." She believed it helped get the paying public into performance venues.

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

Later Career and Personal Life

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

Her vocal talents were frequently featured on radio, notably the comedy program After Henry, which later transitioned to TV, and the series Ladies of Letters, with Patricia Routledge, which became an intrinsic part of the program Woman's Hour.

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

She once received a letter from one of Queen Elizabeth's security men who admitted that when Scales came on stage, he stood up.

"The response was automatic," she explained. "The experience delighted me."

In 1995, she began starring as character Dotty Turnbull in television commercials for supermarket giant Tesco - which compensated her partially with shopping credits.

The advertising series, which ran for nine years, was cited as the primary reason in establishing its dominant market position in the mid-nineties.

Scales later came in for moderate critique for taking part in the Tesco adverts, when she backed a campaign to stop local shops closing in her area of London.

Among her most accomplished roles came in the production Breaking the Code, the film about the Bletchley Park wartime codebreakers.

She appears as the mother of Alan Turing, who represents a culture that criminalized same-sex relationships, a perspective that contributed to his tragic end.

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