Prunella Scales: From Fawlty Towers to Great Canal Journeys

Prunella Scales, who died at the age of 93, was regarded as among Britain's most brilliant comedic performers.

Although a long and distinguished career on stage and screen, her legacy will forever be linked as the unforgettable Sybil Fawlty in the classic 1970s television series, Fawlty Towers.

Sybil's primary objective throughout her existence to closely monitor her "stick insect" husband Basil - portrayed by John Cleese - amid telephone chats fueled by cigarettes with her friend, Audrey.

It fell to her to placate guests who had been yelled at, completely overlooked or, occasionally, throttled by Basil when during his particularly frenzied episodes.

Her unforgettable cackle, extraordinary hairstyle and intense anger were components of a meticulously crafted persona that ranks as a humorous triumph.

And while many actors would have removed themselves from too close an association with a single role, Scales always expressed her pleasure in participating of the Fawlty Towers phenomenon.

Formative Years and Professional Start

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

She belonged to a household deeply in love with the theatre - with her mother, Catherine Scales, a former actor who'd abandoned her career for marriage and children.

Intelligent and studious, after wartime evacuation to England's Lake District, Prunella studied at Moira House Girls School in Eastbourne.

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

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

At drama school, Scales had been thought of as a junior character actor rather than an obvious Juliet.

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

Young Prunella also hid her privileged background, aware that producers started seeking authentic working-class realism in their actors.

Nevertheless she began acquiring small roles in plays, and, during preparations for a part at the Connaught Theatre in Worthing, she met Andrew Sachs, who would subsequently appear 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 Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, which included 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, Laxdale Hall, and David Lean's production Hobson's Choice, opposite Charles Laughton.

During the latter 1950s and early 1960s, she maintained constant employment - performing across multiple mediums, featuring a short appearance as transport worker, Eileen Hughes, in Coronation Street.

She additionally encountered colleague Timothy West.

Following what she characterized as "a mild Times crossword and Polo mints flirtation", they became a couple, and married in 1963.

Career Milestones and Defining Characters

Her major television opportunity came with the series Marriage Lines, a BBC sitcom 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 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 presented the initial screenplay of their comedy creation to the BBC.

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

She later remembered that Cleese maintained high standards.

"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, failed to win huge audiences but, with subsequent episodes, its comedic combination of absurd pratfalls and awkward circumstances grew in popularity.

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

Initially, John Cleese and his wife had doubts regarding the treatment.

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

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

But when asked about her career pinnacle, Scales had no hesitation in selecting Sybil Fawlty.

"It was a tough job," she maintained, "but I'm still proud of it." She believed it helped get the paying public 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.

Subsequent Work and Private World

Following Fawlty Towers, Scales continued to work in television, including a stint as the frumpy Elizabeth Mapp in ITV's Mapp and Lucia.

Her voice was also regularly heard on audio broadcasts, particularly the BBC Radio 4 sitcom, which subsequently transferred to television, and Ladies of Letters, with Patricia Routledge, which evolved into a staple of Woman's Hour.

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

She obtained correspondence from one of Queen Elizabeth's security men who admitted that when Scales appeared, he rose to his feet.

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

In 1995, she started appearing as character Dotty Turnbull in a series of TV adverts for supermarket giant Tesco - which paid her partly in vouchers.

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

Scales subsequently faced some gentle criticism for taking part in the Tesco adverts, when she supported an initiative to stop local shops closing in her area of London.

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

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

Beyond performance, {Scales was