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

Prunella Scales, who passed away at 93 years old, was considered one of Britain's finest 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 - portrayed by John Cleese - between cigarette-fuelled phone conversations with her companion Audrey.

She was tasked to calm visitors who had been shouted at, totally ignored or, in some cases, throttled by Basil when in one of his more manic moods.

Her unforgettable cackle, gravity-defying hairdo and ferocious temper were part of a meticulously crafted persona that ranks as a comic masterpiece.

And while numerous performers would have removed themselves from too close an association with a single role, Scales always expressed her pleasure in having been part of the Fawlty Towers phenomenon.

Early Life and Career Beginnings

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

She belonged to a household deeply in love with the theatre - with her mother, Bim Scales, an ex-actress who'd given it all up for family life.

Intelligent and studious, after wartime evacuation to the Lake District, Prunella attended Moira House educational institution in Eastbourne.

During 1949, she earned a scholarship to the prestigious Old Vic drama school and - after two years - secured a position as a stage management assistant.

This was to the fury of her former headmistress in Eastbourne, who had wished she would seek admission to Cambridge University and wrote to the theatre 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 biographer, "however I lacked conventional beauty and attracted no admirers."

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

Nevertheless she began acquiring small roles in plays, and, while rehearsing for a role at the Connaught Theatre in Worthing, she encountered actor Andrew Sachs, who would subsequently appear as Manuel, the Spanish waiter, in the famous series.

Her initial television exposure occurred in the year 1952, as the character Lydia Bennet in a television adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, which featured Peter Cushing - more famous for his roles in horror movies - as Mr. Darcy.

Her initial film appearances followed the next year - 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 - appearing on stage, film and television, including a brief stint as a bus conductor, Eileen Hughes, in Coronation Street.

She also met colleague Timothy West.

After what Prunella described as "a gentle courtship involving crosswords and candies", they became a couple, and wed in 1963.

Breakthrough and Iconic Roles

Her big TV break came with 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.

Then came the legendary Fawlty Towers, which elevated her to cultural icon.

John Cleese and his then wife, Connie Booth, had submitted the first script of Fawlty Towers to the BBC.

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

She subsequently recalled 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 initial season, which debuted in 1975, failed to win huge audiences but, with subsequent episodes, its hilarious mix of absurd pratfalls and embarrassing situations increased in appeal.

Scales thought hard 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 the treatment.

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

In subsequent years, she frequently found herself, requested to portray stern matriarchs when she desired elegant characters.

However when questioned 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 theaters.

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

Subsequent Work and Private World

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

Her voice was also regularly heard 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 the monarch Queen Victoria in a solo performance that she performed 400 times.

She once received a letter from a royal protection officer who admitted that when Scales appeared, he rose to his feet.

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

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

The campaign, which continued for nine years, was identified as the primary reason in establishing its dominant market position in the mid-nineties.

Scales later came in for moderate critique for taking part in the Tesco adverts, when she backed a campaign to prevent neighborhood store closures in her area of London.

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

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

Beyond performance, {Scales was