The Legendary Prunella Scales: From Fawlty Towers to Remarkable Canal Adventures

The celebrated actress Prunella Scales, who passed away at the age of 93, was regarded as among Britain's most brilliant comedic performers.

Although 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.

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

It fell to her to calm visitors who had been yelled 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 part of a carefully constructed character that ranks as a comic masterpiece.

Although numerous performers would have distanced themselves from too close an association with a single role, Scales always expressed her pleasure in participating of the Fawlty Towers experience.

Early Life and Career Beginnings

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

She belonged to a household deeply in love with the theatre - her mother being, Catherine Scales, an ex-actress who'd given it all up for marriage and children.

Intelligent and studious, after wartime evacuation to England's Lake District, Prunella attended Moira House educational institution in the coastal town of Eastbourne.

In 1949, she won a scholarship to the prestigious Old Vic drama school and - after two years - 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 sent correspondence to the theater to tell them so.

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

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

Young Prunella concealed her privileged background, aware that directors were beginning to look for authentic working-class realism in their actors.

But she started picking up minor parts in theatrical productions, and, during preparations for a role at Worthing's Connaught Theatre, she encountered actor Andrew Sachs, who would subsequently appear as Manuel the Spanish server, in Fawlty Towers.

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

Her initial film appearances followed the next year - in romantic comedy, the film Laxdale Hall, and David Lean's production Hobson's Choice, opposite the renowned Charles Laughton.

Throughout the latter 1950s and early 1960s, she maintained constant employment - performing across multiple mediums, featuring a brief stint as a bus conductor, Eileen Hughes, in Coronation Street.

She also met 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 came with the series Marriage Lines, a BBC sitcom about a newly married couple, George and Kate Starling.

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 propelled her to iconic status.

John Cleese and his spouse at the time, Connie Booth, had submitted the first script of Fawlty Towers to the BBC.

Actress Bridget Turner had been approached to play the Sybil role but she had turned it down and Scales auditioned for the role.

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."

Merely twelve installments were ultimately produced.

The first series, which aired in 1975, failed to win huge audiences but, with subsequent episodes, its hilarious mix of absurd pratfalls and awkward circumstances increased in appeal.

Scales carefully considered about how to play Sybil Fawlty, and determined that her social background had to be below her husband Basil's.

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

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

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 had no hesitation in picking Sybil Fawlty.

"The role presented challenges," she maintained, "but I'm still proud of it." She even thought it helped get audience members into theaters.

"I like to think that if the public have seen you in one thing they'll come and see you in another," she expressed.

Later Career and Personal Life

After Fawlty Towers, Scales maintained her career in the television industry, comprising an engagement as the frumpy Elizabeth Mapp in the series Mapp and Lucia.

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

Scales appeared in two significant royal characters; as Queen Elizabeth II in the television drama of Alan Bennett's work, and as Queen Victoria in a solo performance that she performed 400 times.

She obtained correspondence from one of Queen Elizabeth's security men who confessed that when Scales appeared, he stood up.

"The response was automatic," she explained. "The experience delighted me."

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

The advertising series, which continued 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 participating in the commercial campaign, when she supported an initiative to stop local shops closing in her area of London.

Among her most accomplished roles came in the production Breaking the Code, the film about the Bletchley Park wartime codebreakers.

She portrays Alan Turing's mother, who represents a culture that treated homosexual acts as a crime, an attitude that eventually led to his death.

Away from acting, {Scales was