The Legendary Prunella Scales: Beginning with Fawlty Towers to Great Canal Journeys

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

Despite a long and distinguished professional journey across theater and film, her legacy will forever be linked 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 - played by John Cleese - amid telephone chats fueled by cigarettes with her friend, Audrey.

She was tasked to placate guests who had been yelled at, completely overlooked or, occasionally, throttled by Basil when during his particularly frenzied episodes.

Her nightmarish laugh, extraordinary hairstyle and intense anger were components of a carefully constructed character that stands as a comic masterpiece.

And while many actors would have distanced themselves from excessive identification with one particular character, Scales always expressed her delight in participating of the Fawlty Towers phenomenon.

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, Bim Scales, a former actor who'd abandoned her career for family life.

Bright and bookish, following evacuation during the war to England's Lake District, Prunella attended Moira House Girls School in Eastbourne.

During 1949, she earned a scholarship to the Old Vic Theatre School and - after two years - secured a position as a stage management assistant.

This was to the fury of her former headmistress in Eastbourne, who had hoped she would apply to Cambridge University and sent correspondence to the theater to tell them so.

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

"We all wanted to look like Audrey Hepburn," she later told her biographer, "but I wasn't attractive and nobody fancied me."

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

Nevertheless she began acquiring minor parts in theatrical productions, and, while rehearsing for a role at the Connaught Theatre in Worthing, she met actor Andrew Sachs, who would later star as Manuel the Spanish server, in the famous series.

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

Her initial film appearances came a year later - in romantic comedy, Laxdale Hall, and David Lean's production Hobson's Choice, opposite Charles Laughton.

During 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 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 married in 1963.

Career Milestones and Defining Characters

Her major television opportunity arrived through the series Marriage Lines, a BBC sitcom about a newly married couple, George and Kate Starling.

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

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 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 later remembered that Cleese was a hard taskmaster.

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

Merely twelve installments were ever made.

The first series, which debuted in 1975, didn't immediately attract massive viewership 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 decided that her character's upbringing had to be inferior to her husband Basil's.

Initially, the creators were unsure about this approach.

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

Later in her career, she was, all too often, called upon to play "dragons" and "old bags" when she hankered after elegant characters.

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

"The role presented challenges," she maintained, "but I'm still proud of it." She believed it assisted in bringing audience members 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 the television industry, comprising 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 Ladies of Letters, with Patricia Routledge, which became an intrinsic part of 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 the monarch Queen Victoria in a solo performance that she performed 400 times.

She once received a letter from a royal protection officer who confessed that when Scales came on stage, he stood up.

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

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

The campaign, 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 Tesco adverts, when she backed a campaign to stop local shops closing in her area of London.

Among her most accomplished roles appeared in the production Breaking the Code, the film about World War II cryptanalysts.

She portrays the mother of Alan Turing, who embodies a society that treated homosexual acts as a crime, an attitude that eventually led to his death.

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