Prunella Scales: Beginning with the Iconic Fawlty Towers to Remarkable Canal Adventures

The celebrated actress Prunella Scales, who passed away at the age of 93, was considered among Britain's most brilliant comedic performers.

Despite a long and distinguished professional journey across theater and film, she will inevitably be remembered as the unforgettable Sybil Fawlty in the classic 1970s television series, Fawlty Towers.

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

She was tasked to calm visitors who had been shouted at, totally ignored or, in some cases, throttled by Basil when in one of his more manic moods.

Her nightmarish laugh, gravity-defying hairdo and intense anger were components of a carefully constructed character that stands as a comic masterpiece.

And while numerous performers would have removed themselves from excessive identification with a single role, Scales always expressed her pleasure in participating of the Fawlty Towers experience.

Early Life and Career Beginnings

The actress born Prunella Margaret Rumney Illingworth came into the world in the Guildford area on 22 June 1932.

She belonged to a household profoundly passionate about theatrical arts - with her mother, Catherine Scales, an ex-actress who'd abandoned her career for family life.

Bright and bookish, following evacuation during the war to the Lake District, Prunella studied at Moira House Girls School in the coastal town of Eastbourne.

In 1949, she won a scholarship to the prestigious Old Vic drama school and - two years later - secured a position as an assistant stage manager.

This was to the fury of her previous school principal in Eastbourne, who had hoped she would apply to Cambridge and wrote to the theatre to tell them so.

At drama school, Scales had been thought of as a developing character performer rather than a natural Juliet candidate.

"Everyone aspired to resemble Audrey Hepburn," she later told her chronicler, "but I wasn't attractive and nobody fancied me."

The youthful Prunella also hid her privileged background, conscious that producers started seeking a new kind of earthy credibility in their actors.

But she started picking up small roles in plays, and, while rehearsing for a part at the Connaught Theatre in Worthing, she encountered actor Andrew Sachs, who would later star as Manuel, the Spanish waiter, in Fawlty Towers.

Her initial television exposure occurred in 1952, as the character 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 came a year later - in lighthearted romance, the film Laxdale Hall, and David Lean's Hobson's Choice, opposite Charles Laughton.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, she maintained constant employment - appearing on stage, film and television, including a brief stint as transport worker, character Eileen Hughes, in the popular soap Coronation Street.

She additionally encountered fellow actor Timothy West.

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

Breakthrough and Iconic Roles

Her major television opportunity came with Marriage Lines, a comedy program about a newly married couple, George and Kate Starling.

Scales performed alongside actor Richard Briers, then one of the biggest stars in TV humor. The program achieved great success and ran for five years.

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

John Cleese and his then wife, Connie Booth, had presented the initial screenplay of Fawlty Towers to the broadcasting corporation.

Performer Bridget Turner had been considered for the Sybil role but she had turned it down and Scales tried out for the character.

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 thought hard about how to play Sybil Fawlty, and determined that her social background had to be inferior to her husband Basil's.

Initially, John Cleese and his wife 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, requested to portray "dragons" and "old bags" when she desired more glamorous roles.

However when questioned about her career pinnacle, Scales immediately identified in picking Sybil Fawlty.

"The role presented challenges," she maintained, "but I'm still proud of it." She even thought it assisted in bringing audience members into performance venues.

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

Subsequent Work and Private World

After Fawlty Towers, Scales maintained her career in television, including an engagement as character Elizabeth Mapp in ITV's Mapp and Lucia.

Her vocal talents were frequently featured on radio, notably the BBC Radio 4 sitcom, which subsequently transferred to television, and the series Ladies of Letters, with actress Patricia Routledge, which evolved into a staple of Woman's Hour.

Scales appeared in at two major royal roles; as Queen Elizabeth in the television drama of Alan Bennett's work, and as Queen Victoria in a solo performance that she presented four hundred times.

She obtained correspondence from a royal protection officer who confessed that when Scales appeared, he rose to his feet.

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

During 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 establishing its dominant market position in the mid 1990s.

Scales subsequently faced some gentle criticism for participating in the commercial campaign, when she backed a campaign to stop local shops closing in her London community.

One of her finest performances appeared in Breaking the Code, the film about World War II cryptanalysts.

She appears as Alan Turing's mother, who represents a culture that treated homosexual acts as a crime, a perspective that contributed to his tragic end.

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