Prunella Scales: Beginning with Fawlty Towers to Great Canal Journeys

Prunella Scales, who died at 93 years old, was considered among Britain's most brilliant comedic performers.

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

It was Sybil's mission 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 friend, Audrey.

It fell to her to placate guests who had been shouted at, totally ignored or, occasionally, physically confronted by Basil when during his particularly frenzied episodes.

Her nightmarish laugh, extraordinary hairstyle and intense anger were part of a meticulously crafted persona that stands as a comic masterpiece.

And while numerous performers would have removed themselves from excessive identification with a single role, Scales consistently voiced her delight in participating of the Fawlty Towers phenomenon.

Formative Years and Professional Start

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

It was a family deeply in love with 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 England's Lake District, Prunella attended 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 her hometown, who had wished she would seek admission to Cambridge and sent correspondence to the theater to express this opinion.

At drama school, 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, "but I wasn't attractive and nobody fancied me."

Young Prunella concealed her middle-class roots, aware that producers started seeking a new kind of earthy credibility in performers.

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

Her initial television exposure occurred in the year 1952, as the character Lydia Bennet in a BBC production of Pride and Prejudice, which featured actor 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.

Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, she was rarely out of work - appearing on stage, film and television, including 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 got together, and married in 1963.

Breakthrough and Iconic Roles

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

Scales appeared opposite 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 elevated her to cultural icon.

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

Actress Bridget Turner had been considered for the Sybil role but she had turned it down and Scales auditioned for the role.

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."

Only 12 episodes were ultimately produced.

The first series, which aired in 1975, didn't immediately attract massive viewership but, as it continued, its hilarious mix of ridiculous physical comedy and awkward circumstances grew in popularity.

Scales carefully considered about portraying Sybil Fawlty, and determined that her social background had to be below her husband Basil's.

At first, the creators had doubts regarding the treatment.

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

In subsequent years, she frequently found herself, called upon to play "dragons" and "old bags" when she desired elegant characters.

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

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

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

Subsequent Work and Private World

Following Fawlty Towers, Scales maintained her career in the television industry, comprising an engagement as character Elizabeth Mapp in ITV's Mapp and Lucia.

Her voice was also regularly heard on radio, particularly the BBC Radio 4 sitcom, which subsequently transferred to television, and the series Ladies of Letters, with actress Patricia Routledge, which became an intrinsic part of Woman's Hour.

Scales appeared in two significant royal characters; as Queen Elizabeth in the BBC production of Alan Bennett's A Question of Attribution, and as Queen Victoria in a one-woman show that she performed 400 times.

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

"It was a knee-jerk reaction," she explained. "The experience delighted me."

In 1995, she began starring as Dotty Turnbull in a series of TV adverts for the retail chain Tesco - which compensated her partially with shopping credits.

The advertising series, which continued for nine years, was identified as the biggest factor in establishing its dominant market position in the mid 1990s.

Scales later came in for moderate critique for taking part in the commercial campaign, when she supported an initiative to stop local shops closing in her area of London.

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

She portrays 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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