The Legendary Prunella Scales: From Fawlty Towers to Great Canal Journeys

The celebrated actress Prunella Scales, who died at the age of 93, was regarded as one of Britain's finest comic actors.

Despite a long and distinguished professional journey across theater and film, her legacy will forever be linked as Sybil Fawlty in the 1970s TV comedy, the beloved Fawlty Towers.

Sybil's primary objective in life to closely monitor her husband Basil described as a "stick insect" - played by John Cleese - amid telephone chats fueled by cigarettes with her companion Audrey.

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

Her nightmarish laugh, extraordinary hairstyle and ferocious temper were part of a meticulously crafted persona that ranks as a comic masterpiece.

Although numerous performers would have distanced themselves from excessive identification with one particular character, Scales always expressed her pleasure in participating of the Fawlty Towers phenomenon.

Formative Years and Professional Start

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

She belonged to a household profoundly passionate about the theatre - with her mother, Bim Scales, a former actor who'd given it all up for family life.

Bright and bookish, following evacuation during the war to the Lake District, Prunella attended Moira House educational institution in the coastal town of Eastbourne.

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

This decision angered of her previous school principal 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 a natural Juliet candidate.

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

The youthful Prunella concealed her middle-class roots, conscious that directors were beginning to look for a new kind of earthy credibility in performers.

Nevertheless she began acquiring minor parts in plays, and, during preparations for a role at Worthing's Connaught Theatre, she encountered Andrew Sachs, who would subsequently appear as Manuel, the Spanish waiter, in the famous series.

There was an early television appearance in the year 1952, as Lydia Bennet in a television adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, which included 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 romantic comedy, Laxdale Hall, and David Lean's production Hobson's Choice, opposite Charles Laughton.

Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, she was rarely out of work - performing across multiple mediums, including a short appearance as transport worker, Eileen Hughes, in Coronation Street.

She additionally encountered colleague Timothy West.

After what Prunella described as "a gentle courtship involving crosswords and candies", they got together, and wed in 1963.

Breakthrough and Iconic Roles

Her big TV break came with the series Marriage Lines, a comedy program about a newly married couple, the Starling couple.

Scales performed alongside actor Richard Briers, at that time a major celebrity in television comedy. The program achieved great success and continued for five seasons.

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 Fawlty Towers to the BBC.

Performer Bridget Turner had been approached to play Sybil Fawlty but she declined the part 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 comedic combination 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 below her husband Basil's.

At first, 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 frequently found herself, requested to portray stern matriarchs when she desired elegant characters.

However when questioned about what she thought was the high point, Scales immediately identified in picking Sybil Fawlty.

"It was a tough job," 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.

Later Career and Personal Life

After Fawlty Towers, Scales continued to work 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 audio broadcasts, particularly the comedy program After Henry, which later transitioned to TV, and Ladies of Letters, with actress Patricia Routledge, which evolved into a staple of Woman's Hour.

Scales performed two significant royal characters; as Queen Elizabeth II in the television drama of Alan Bennett's work, and as the monarch Queen Victoria in a one-woman show that she performed 400 times.

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

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

In 1995, she started appearing as 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 primary reason in propelling it to market leadership in the mid-nineties.

Scales subsequently faced 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 appeared in Breaking the Code, the film about 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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