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

The celebrated actress Prunella Scales, who passed away at the age of 93, 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 the unforgettable Sybil Fawlty in the 1970s TV comedy, the beloved Fawlty Towers.

It was Sybil's mission throughout her existence to keep tabs on her husband Basil described as a "stick insect" - portrayed by comedian John Cleese - between cigarette-fuelled phone conversations with her companion Audrey.

She was tasked to calm visitors who had been yelled at, totally ignored or, in some cases, throttled by Basil when during his particularly frenzied episodes.

Her unforgettable cackle, extraordinary hairstyle and intense anger were components of a carefully constructed character that ranks as a comic masterpiece.

And while numerous performers would have distanced themselves from too close an association with one particular character, Scales always expressed her delight in having been part of the Fawlty Towers phenomenon.

Early Life and Career Beginnings

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

It was a family 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, following evacuation during the war to the Lake District, Prunella attended Moira House Girls School in Eastbourne.

During 1949, she won a scholarship to the Old Vic Theatre School and - two years later - secured a position 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.

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

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

The youthful Prunella also hid her privileged background, conscious that directors were beginning to look for authentic working-class realism in their actors.

But she started picking up minor parts in plays, and, while rehearsing for a part at Worthing's Connaught Theatre, she met 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 television adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, which included 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, alongside the renowned Charles Laughton.

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

She also met colleague Timothy West.

After what Prunella described as "a mild Times crossword and Polo mints flirtation", they got together, and married in 1963.

Career Milestones and Defining Characters

Her big TV break arrived through the series Marriage Lines, a comedy program about recentlyweds, George and Kate Starling.

Scales appeared opposite Richard Briers, at that time a major celebrity in TV humor. 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 presented the initial screenplay 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 subsequently recalled 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 ridiculous physical comedy and embarrassing situations increased in appeal.

Scales thought hard about portraying Sybil Fawlty, and decided that her character's upbringing had to be inferior to 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."

In subsequent years, she was, all too often, 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 selecting Sybil Fawlty.

"The role presented challenges," she insisted, "but I'm still proud of it." She even thought 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.

Later Career and Personal Life

Following Fawlty Towers, Scales maintained her career in the television industry, including a stint as the frumpy Elizabeth Mapp in ITV's Mapp and Lucia.

Her vocal talents were frequently featured on audio broadcasts, notably the BBC Radio 4 sitcom, which subsequently transferred to television, and the series Ladies of Letters, with actress Patricia Routledge, which became an intrinsic part of 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 the monarch Queen Victoria in a one-woman show that she performed 400 times.

She once received a letter from one of Queen Elizabeth's security men who admitted that when Scales came on stage, he stood up.

"The response was automatic," she explained. "I was thrilled."

During 1995, she started appearing as Dotty Turnbull in a series of TV adverts for supermarket giant Tesco - which paid her partly in vouchers.

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

Scales later came in for some gentle criticism for participating 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, an attitude that eventually led to his death.

Beyond performance, {Scales was