Prunella Scales: From Fawlty Towers to Great Canal Journeys

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

Despite a long and distinguished professional journey across theater and film, she will inevitably be remembered as the unforgettable Sybil Fawlty in the 1970s TV comedy, the beloved Fawlty Towers.

Sybil's primary objective in life to keep tabs on her husband Basil described as a "stick insect" - portrayed by comedian John Cleese - between telephone chats fueled by cigarettes with her friend, Audrey.

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

Her nightmarish laugh, extraordinary hairstyle and intense anger were part of a meticulously crafted persona that ranks as a humorous triumph.

And while numerous performers would have removed themselves from excessive identification with a single role, Scales always expressed her pleasure in having been part of the Fawlty Towers experience.

Formative Years and Professional Start

Prunella Margaret Rumney Illingworth was born near Guildford on June 22nd, 1932.

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

Bright and bookish, following evacuation during the war to England's Lake District, Prunella studied at Moira House educational institution in Eastbourne.

In 1949, she earned a scholarship to the prestigious Old Vic drama school and - after two years - obtained a role 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 wrote to the theatre to tell them so.

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

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

Young Prunella also hid her middle-class roots, conscious that producers started seeking authentic working-class realism in performers.

Nevertheless she began acquiring minor parts in plays, and, during preparations for a role at the Connaught Theatre in Worthing, she met actor Andrew Sachs, who would later star as Manuel, the Spanish waiter, in the famous series.

Her initial television exposure occurred in 1952, as Lydia Bennet in a television adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, which included Peter Cushing - more famous for his roles in horror movies - as Mr Darcy.

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

Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, she maintained constant employment - performing across multiple mediums, featuring a short appearance as a bus conductor, character 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 got together, and married in 1963.

Breakthrough and Iconic Roles

Her major television opportunity arrived through Marriage Lines, a comedy program about recentlyweds, George and Kate Starling.

Scales performed alongside Richard Briers, then one of the biggest stars in television comedy. The program achieved great success and ran for five years.

Then came Fawlty Towers, which propelled her to iconic status.

John Cleese and his then wife, Connie Booth, had presented the initial screenplay of their comedy creation to the BBC.

Actress Bridget Turner had been approached to play Sybil Fawlty 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."

Only 12 episodes were ever made.

The first series, which aired in 1975, didn't immediately attract massive viewership but, with subsequent episodes, its hilarious mix of absurd pratfalls and embarrassing situations grew in popularity.

Scales thought hard about how to play Sybil Fawlty, and decided that her character's upbringing 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 was, all too often, called upon to play stern matriarchs when she desired more glamorous roles.

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

"The role presented challenges," 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 expressed.

Subsequent Work and Private World

Following Fawlty Towers, Scales continued to work in the television industry, comprising a stint 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 later transitioned to TV, and the series Ladies of Letters, with actress Patricia Routledge, which evolved into a staple of Woman's Hour.

Scales appeared in two significant royal characters; as Queen Elizabeth II in the BBC production of Alan Bennett's work, and as Queen Victoria in a one-woman show that she presented four hundred times.

She once received a letter from a royal protection officer who confessed that when Scales appeared, he stood up.

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

During 1995, she began starring as character Dotty Turnbull in television commercials for supermarket giant Tesco - which paid her partly in vouchers.

The advertising series, which ran for nine years, was cited as the primary reason in propelling it to market leadership in the mid-nineties.

Scales later came in for moderate critique for participating in the Tesco adverts, 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 movie concerning World War II cryptanalysts.

She appears as the mother of Alan Turing, who embodies a society that criminalized same-sex relationships, a perspective that contributed to his tragic end.

Beyond performance, {Scales was