The Legendary Prunella Scales: Beginning with Fawlty Towers to Great Canal Journeys

Prunella Scales, who passed away at 93 years old, was considered among Britain's most brilliant comic actors.

Despite an extensive and respected career on stage and screen, she will inevitably be remembered as Sybil Fawlty in the 1970s TV comedy, the beloved Fawlty Towers.

Sybil's primary objective in life to closely monitor her "stick insect" husband Basil - played by John Cleese - between telephone chats fueled by cigarettes with her friend, Audrey.

It fell to her to placate guests who had been shouted at, totally ignored or, in some cases, physically confronted by Basil when in one of his more manic moods.

Her unforgettable cackle, gravity-defying hairdo and intense anger were components of a meticulously crafted persona that ranks as a humorous triumph.

Although numerous performers would have removed themselves from excessive identification with a single role, Scales always expressed her delight in participating of the Fawlty Towers experience.

Early Life and Career Beginnings

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

She belonged to a household deeply in love with the theatre - with her mother, Bim Scales, a former actor who'd abandoned her career for family life.

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

During 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 express this opinion.

During her theatrical training, Scales had been thought of as a junior character actor instead of an obvious Juliet.

"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, aware that producers started seeking a new kind of earthy credibility 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.

Her initial television exposure occurred in the year 1952, as 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 followed the next year - in romantic comedy, the film Laxdale Hall, and David Lean's Hobson's Choice, alongside Charles Laughton.

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

She also met fellow actor 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 major television opportunity arrived through Marriage Lines, a BBC sitcom about recentlyweds, the Starling couple.

Scales appeared opposite actor Richard Briers, at that time a major celebrity in TV humor. The program achieved great success and ran for five years.

Subsequently arrived the legendary 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 broadcasting corporation.

Performer Bridget Turner had been considered for Sybil Fawlty but she declined the part and Scales tried out for the character.

She later remembered that Cleese was a hard taskmaster.

"John, appropriately, demanded strict script adherence, and failure to comply would understandably provoke his irritation."

Only 12 episodes were ever made.

The first series, which debuted in 1975, didn't immediately attract massive viewership but, with subsequent episodes, its comedic combination of absurd pratfalls and embarrassing situations increased in appeal.

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

Initially, John Cleese and his wife had doubts regarding this approach.

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

Later in her career, she frequently found herself, called upon to play "dragons" and "old bags" when she desired elegant characters.

However when questioned about her career pinnacle, Scales had no hesitation in picking Sybil Fawlty.

"It was a tough job," she maintained, "yet I remain proud of my work." She believed it assisted in bringing the paying public into performance venues.

"I believe that audience familiarity with one performance encourages attendance at others," she said.

Subsequent Work and Private World

Following Fawlty Towers, Scales maintained her career in television, comprising a stint as character Elizabeth Mapp in ITV's Mapp and Lucia.

Her voice was also regularly heard on radio, notably the BBC Radio 4 sitcom, which subsequently transferred to television, and the series Ladies of Letters, with Patricia Routledge, which became an intrinsic part of the program Woman's Hour.

Scales performed at two major royal roles; as Queen Elizabeth II in the BBC production of Alan Bennett's A Question of Attribution, and as Queen Victoria in a one-woman show that she performed 400 times.

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

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

In 1995, she began starring as character Dotty Turnbull in a series of TV adverts for the retail chain Tesco - which compensated her partially with shopping credits.

The advertising series, which ran for nine years, was cited as the primary reason in establishing its dominant market position in the mid-nineties.

Scales later came in for moderate critique for participating in the Tesco adverts, when she supported an initiative to prevent neighborhood store closures in her area of London.

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

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

Beyond performance, {Scales was