The Legendary Prunella Scales: Beginning with the Iconic Fawlty Towers to Remarkable Canal Adventures

The celebrated actress Prunella Scales, who died at 93 years old, was considered among Britain's most brilliant comic actors.

Despite an extensive and respected professional journey across theater and film, her legacy will forever be linked as Sybil Fawlty in the classic 1970s television series, the beloved Fawlty Towers.

It was Sybil's mission in life to closely monitor her "stick insect" husband Basil - played by John Cleese - amid cigarette-fuelled phone conversations with her friend, Audrey.

It fell to her to placate guests who had been shouted at, completely overlooked or, occasionally, throttled by Basil when in one of his more manic moods.

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

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

Early Life and Career Beginnings

Prunella Margaret Rumney Illingworth came into the world in the Guildford area on 22 June 1932.

It was a family deeply in love with the theatre - her mother being, Catherine Scales, a former actor who'd abandoned her career for family life.

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

In 1949, she won a scholarship to the prestigious Old Vic drama school and - two years later - obtained a role as an assistant stage manager.

This was to the fury of her former headmistress in her hometown, who had hoped she would apply to Cambridge University and wrote to the theatre to tell them so.

During her theatrical training, Scales was perceived as a junior character actor instead of a natural Juliet candidate.

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

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

But she started picking up minor parts in plays, and, during preparations for a part at the Connaught Theatre in Worthing, she encountered Andrew Sachs, who would subsequently appear as Manuel, the Spanish waiter, in Fawlty Towers.

There was an early television appearance in the year 1952, as the character Lydia Bennet in a BBC production of Pride and Prejudice, which featured actor Peter Cushing - more famous for his horror film performances - 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, alongside the renowned Charles Laughton.

Throughout the latter 1950s and early 1960s, she maintained constant employment - performing across multiple mediums, including a short appearance as a bus conductor, Eileen Hughes, in the popular soap Coronation Street.

She additionally encountered colleague 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 big TV break came with Marriage Lines, a BBC sitcom about a newly married couple, the Starling couple.

Scales appeared opposite actor Richard Briers, at that time a major celebrity in television comedy. The show proved hugely popular and ran for five years.

Then came 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.

Performer Bridget Turner had been considered for the Sybil role but she declined the part 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 ultimately produced.

The initial season, which aired in 1975, didn't immediately attract massive viewership but, as it continued, its comedic combination of ridiculous physical comedy and embarrassing situations grew in popularity.

Scales carefully considered about how to play Sybil Fawlty, and determined that her character's upbringing had to be inferior to her husband Basil's.

Initially, John Cleese and his wife were unsure about this approach.

"Once they heard the first reading in rehearsal," recalled Scales, "they were sold on the idea."

Later in her career, she frequently found herself, called upon to play stern matriarchs when she desired more glamorous roles.

But when asked about what she thought was the high point, Scales immediately identified in picking 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

After Fawlty Towers, Scales maintained her career in the television industry, including a stint as the frumpy Elizabeth Mapp in the series Mapp and Lucia.

Her voice was also regularly heard on audio broadcasts, particularly the BBC Radio 4 sitcom, which later transitioned to TV, and the series Ladies of Letters, with Patricia Routledge, which became an intrinsic part of Woman's Hour.

Scales performed at two major royal roles; as Queen Elizabeth in the BBC production of Alan Bennett's work, and as Queen Victoria in a solo performance that she presented four hundred times.

She obtained correspondence from a royal protection officer who admitted that when Scales came on stage, he rose to his feet.

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

During 1995, she began starring as Dotty Turnbull in television commercials for the retail chain Tesco - which compensated her partially with shopping credits.

The campaign, which continued for nine years, was identified as the biggest factor in propelling it to market leadership in the mid-nineties.

Scales later came in for some gentle criticism for participating in the commercial campaign, when she backed a campaign to stop local shops closing in her London community.

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

She appears as Alan Turing's mother, who embodies a society that treated homosexual acts as a crime, a perspective that contributed to his tragic end.

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