Prunella Scales: Beginning with the Iconic Fawlty Towers to Great Canal Journeys

The celebrated actress Prunella Scales, who passed away at 93 years old, was considered 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 the unforgettable Sybil Fawlty in the 1970s TV comedy, Fawlty Towers.

It was Sybil's mission in life to closely monitor her husband Basil described as a "stick insect" - portrayed by comedian John Cleese - between telephone chats fueled by cigarettes with her companion Audrey.

It fell to her to calm visitors who had been yelled at, totally ignored or, in some cases, physically confronted 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 ranks as a humorous triumph.

And while 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.

Early Life and Career Beginnings

Prunella Margaret Rumney Illingworth came into the world near Guildford on June 22nd, 1932.

She belonged to a household profoundly passionate about the theatre - with her mother, Bim Scales, an ex-actress who'd given it all up for marriage and children.

Intelligent and studious, following evacuation during the war to the Lake District, Prunella studied at Moira House educational institution in Eastbourne.

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

This was to the fury of her previous school principal in Eastbourne, who had wished she would seek admission to Cambridge and sent correspondence to the theater to tell them so.

At drama school, Scales was perceived as a developing character performer instead of an obvious Juliet.

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

Young Prunella also hid her privileged background, aware that producers started seeking a new kind of earthy credibility in performers.

Nevertheless she began acquiring small roles in theatrical productions, and, during preparations for a part at the Connaught Theatre in Worthing, she met Andrew Sachs, who would subsequently appear as Manuel the Spanish server, in Fawlty Towers.

Her initial television exposure occurred in the year 1952, as Lydia Bennet in a BBC production of Pride and Prejudice, which included actor Peter Cushing - more famous for his roles in horror movies - 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.

Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, she maintained constant employment - appearing on stage, film and television, including a short appearance as a bus conductor, 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 became a couple, and wed in 1963.

Career Milestones and Defining Characters

Her big TV break arrived through Marriage Lines, a comedy program about a newly married couple, George and Kate Starling.

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

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

John Cleese and his spouse at the time, Connie Booth, had presented the initial screenplay of Fawlty Towers to the broadcasting corporation.

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

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."

Only 12 episodes were ever made.

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

Scales thought hard about portraying Sybil Fawlty, and decided that her character's upbringing had to be below her husband Basil's.

At first, the creators had doubts regarding this approach.

"After witnessing the initial read-through," recalled Scales, "they embraced the concept completely."

Later in her career, she was, all too often, requested to portray stern matriarchs when she hankered after elegant characters.

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

"It was a tough job," she insisted, "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.

Subsequent Work and Private World

After Fawlty Towers, Scales continued to work in the television industry, comprising an engagement as character Elizabeth Mapp in the series Mapp and Lucia.

Her vocal talents were frequently featured on radio, notably the BBC Radio 4 sitcom, which subsequently transferred to television, and Ladies of Letters, with actress Patricia Routledge, which became an intrinsic part 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 rose to his feet.

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

In 1995, she started appearing as Dotty Turnbull in a series of TV adverts 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 subsequently faced moderate critique for taking part in the commercial campaign, when she backed a campaign to prevent neighborhood store closures in her London community.

Among her most accomplished roles came in the production 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, a perspective that contributed to his tragic end.

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