Prunella Scales: From the Iconic Fawlty Towers to Remarkable Canal Adventures

The celebrated actress Prunella Scales, who died at 93 years old, was considered one of Britain's finest comic actors.

Although an extensive and respected professional journey across theater and film, her legacy will forever be linked as the unforgettable Sybil Fawlty in the 1970s TV comedy, the beloved Fawlty Towers.

Sybil's primary objective throughout her existence to closely monitor her husband Basil described as a "stick insect" - played 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, physically confronted by Basil when in one of his more manic moods.

Her unforgettable cackle, gravity-defying hairdo and intense anger were components of a meticulously crafted persona that ranks as a humorous triumph.

Although many actors would have removed themselves from too close an association with one particular character, Scales consistently voiced her delight in participating of the Fawlty Towers experience.

Early Life and Career Beginnings

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

It was a family profoundly passionate about the theatre - with her mother, Bim Scales, an ex-actress who'd abandoned her career for marriage and children.

Intelligent and studious, following evacuation during the war to England's Lake District, Prunella attended Moira House educational institution in Eastbourne.

In 1949, she earned a scholarship to the Old Vic Theatre School and - two years later - obtained a role as a stage management assistant.

This decision angered of her former headmistress in Eastbourne, 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 junior character actor instead of an obvious Juliet.

"We all wanted to look like Audrey Hepburn," she later told her chronicler, "however I lacked conventional beauty and attracted no admirers."

The youthful Prunella concealed her privileged background, conscious that directors were beginning to look for authentic working-class realism in performers.

But she started picking up small roles in plays, and, during preparations for a part at the Connaught Theatre in Worthing, she met Andrew Sachs, who would later star as Manuel, the Spanish waiter, in the famous series.

Her initial television exposure occurred in the year 1952, as Lydia Bennet in a television adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, which featured Peter Cushing - better known for his horror film performances - as Mr Darcy.

And her first big screen roles came a year later - in romantic comedy, the film Laxdale Hall, and David Lean's production Hobson's Choice, alongside the renowned Charles Laughton.

During the latter 1950s and early 1960s, she maintained constant employment - appearing on stage, film and television, featuring a brief stint as a bus conductor, Eileen Hughes, in the popular soap Coronation Street.

She additionally encountered fellow actor Timothy West.

After what Prunella described as "a mild Times crossword and Polo mints flirtation", they became a couple, and married in 1963.

Career Milestones and Defining Characters

Her big TV break came with the series 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 show proved hugely popular and continued for five seasons.

Subsequently arrived the legendary Fawlty Towers, which elevated her to cultural icon.

John Cleese and his then wife, Connie Booth, had submitted the first script of Fawlty Towers to the broadcasting corporation.

Actress Bridget Turner had been considered for Sybil Fawlty but she declined the part and Scales auditioned for the role.

She later remembered 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 aired in 1975, didn't immediately attract massive viewership but, with subsequent episodes, its hilarious mix of absurd pratfalls and awkward circumstances increased in appeal.

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

At first, the creators were unsure about this approach.

"After witnessing the initial read-through," Scales remembered, "they were sold on the idea."

Later in her career, she frequently found herself, called upon to play stern matriarchs when she desired elegant characters.

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

"It was a tough job," she insisted, "yet I remain proud of my work." She even thought it assisted in bringing audience members into performance venues.

"I like to think that if the public have seen you in one thing they'll come and see you in another," she said.

Later Career and Personal Life

After Fawlty Towers, Scales maintained her career in television, including a stint as the frumpy Elizabeth Mapp in ITV's Mapp and Lucia.

Her voice was also regularly heard on radio, notably the comedy program After Henry, which subsequently transferred to television, and the series Ladies of Letters, with actress Patricia Routledge, which evolved into a staple of the program Woman's Hour.

Scales appeared in at two major royal roles; as Queen Elizabeth II in the television drama of Alan Bennett's A Question of Attribution, and as the monarch Queen Victoria in a one-woman show that she presented four hundred times.

She once received a letter from one of Queen Elizabeth's security men who confessed that when Scales appeared, he stood up.

"The response was automatic," she clarified. "I was thrilled."

In 1995, she started appearing as character Dotty Turnbull in a series of TV adverts for supermarket giant Tesco - which compensated her partially with shopping credits.

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

Scales subsequently faced moderate critique for taking part in the Tesco adverts, when she backed a campaign to stop local shops closing in her London community.

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

She appears as Alan Turing's mother, who represents a culture that treated homosexual acts as a crime, an attitude that eventually led to his death.

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