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

The celebrated actress Prunella Scales, who died at the age of 93, was regarded as one of Britain's finest comic actors.

Despite an extensive and respected career on stage and screen, her legacy will forever be linked as the unforgettable Sybil Fawlty in the classic 1970s television series, Fawlty Towers.

Sybil's primary objective throughout her existence to keep tabs on her "stick insect" husband Basil - played by comedian John Cleese - amid cigarette-fuelled phone conversations with her friend, Audrey.

It fell to her to placate guests who had been yelled at, completely overlooked or, occasionally, throttled by Basil when in one of his more manic moods.

Her unforgettable cackle, gravity-defying hairdo and ferocious temper were part of a carefully constructed character that stands as a comic masterpiece.

Although numerous performers would have distanced themselves from too close an association with a single role, Scales consistently voiced her pleasure in having been part of the Fawlty Towers experience.

Early Life and Career Beginnings

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

She belonged to a household deeply in love with theatrical arts - her mother being, Bim Scales, a former actor who'd abandoned her career for marriage and children.

Intelligent and studious, after wartime evacuation to the Lake District, Prunella studied at Moira House Girls School in Eastbourne.

During 1949, she earned a scholarship to the prestigious Old Vic drama 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 wished she would seek admission to Cambridge and sent correspondence to the theater to express this opinion.

During her theatrical training, Scales was perceived as a junior character actor instead of a natural Juliet candidate.

"We all wanted to look like Audrey Hepburn," she subsequently informed her chronicler, "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.

But she started picking up minor parts in theatrical productions, and, while rehearsing for a role at the Connaught Theatre in Worthing, she encountered Andrew Sachs, who would later star as Manuel, the Spanish waiter, in Fawlty Towers.

Her initial television exposure occurred in 1952, as Lydia Bennet in a BBC production of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, which included Peter Cushing - more famous for his horror film performances - as Mr. Darcy.

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

During the latter 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 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.

Career Milestones and Defining Characters

Her major television opportunity arrived through Marriage Lines, a comedy program about a newly married couple, the Starling couple.

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

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

John Cleese and his then wife, Connie Booth, had presented the initial screenplay of Fawlty Towers to the broadcasting corporation.

Performer Bridget Turner had been considered for the Sybil role but she had turned it down 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 ever made.

The initial season, which aired in 1975, didn't immediately attract massive viewership but, with subsequent episodes, its comedic combination of ridiculous physical comedy and embarrassing situations grew in popularity.

Scales thought hard about how to play Sybil Fawlty, and decided that her social background had to be inferior to her husband Basil's.

At first, John Cleese and his wife were unsure about the treatment.

"After witnessing the initial read-through," recalled Scales, "they embraced the concept completely."

Later in her career, she was, all too often, called upon to play "dragons" and "old bags" when she desired more glamorous roles.

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

"It was a tough job," she insisted, "yet I remain proud of my work." She even thought it helped get the paying public 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 said.

Subsequent Work and Private World

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

Her vocal talents were frequently featured on radio, notably the comedy program After Henry, 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 appeared in two significant royal characters; as Queen Elizabeth in the television drama 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 a royal protection officer who confessed that when Scales came on stage, he stood up.

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

In 1995, she began starring as character 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 establishing its dominant market position in the mid 1990s.

Scales later came in for some gentle criticism for participating in the commercial campaign, when she backed a campaign to prevent neighborhood store closures in her London community.

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

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

Beyond performance, {Scales was