Prunella Scales: Beginning with Fawlty Towers to Remarkable Canal Adventures

The celebrated actress Prunella Scales, who died at the age of 93, was regarded as among Britain's most brilliant comedic performers.

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.

Sybil's primary objective in life to keep tabs on her "stick insect" husband Basil - portrayed by comedian John Cleese - amid cigarette-fuelled phone conversations with her companion 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 ferocious temper were components of a meticulously crafted persona that ranks as a comic masterpiece.

Although numerous performers would have removed themselves from excessive identification with a single role, Scales consistently voiced her delight in having been part of the Fawlty Towers phenomenon.

Formative Years and Professional Start

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

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

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

In 1949, she won a scholarship to the Old Vic Theatre School and - after two years - secured a position 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 University and wrote to the theatre to express this opinion.

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 later told her biographer, "but I wasn't attractive and nobody fancied me."

Young Prunella concealed her middle-class roots, aware that producers started seeking authentic working-class realism in their actors.

But she started picking up small roles in theatrical productions, and, while rehearsing for a role at Worthing's Connaught Theatre, she encountered Andrew Sachs, who would subsequently appear as Manuel, the Spanish waiter, in Fawlty Towers.

There was an early television appearance in the year 1952, as the character Lydia Bennet in a television adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, which featured Peter Cushing - better known for his roles in horror movies - as Mr. Darcy.

And her first big screen roles followed the next year - in lighthearted romance, Laxdale Hall, and David Lean's Hobson's Choice, opposite the renowned Charles Laughton.

Throughout the latter 1950s and early 1960s, she maintained constant employment - appearing on stage, film and television, featuring a brief stint as a bus conductor, character Eileen Hughes, in Coronation Street.

She also met colleague Timothy West.

Following what she characterized as "a mild Times crossword and Polo mints flirtation", they got together, and wed in 1963.

Career Milestones and Defining Characters

Her big TV break came with Marriage Lines, a BBC sitcom about recentlyweds, the Starling couple.

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

Subsequently arrived the legendary Fawlty Towers, which propelled her to iconic status.

John Cleese and his then wife, Connie Booth, had submitted the first script of Fawlty Towers 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 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 initial season, which aired in 1975, didn't immediately attract massive viewership but, with subsequent episodes, its hilarious mix of absurd pratfalls and awkward circumstances increased in appeal.

Scales carefully considered about how to play Sybil Fawlty, and decided that her character's upbringing had to be inferior to Basil's social standing.

At first, the creators were unsure about this approach.

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

Later in her career, she was, all too often, called upon to play stern matriarchs when she hankered after elegant characters.

But when asked about what she thought was the high point, Scales immediately identified in picking Sybil Fawlty.

"It was a tough job," she maintained, "but I'm still proud of it." She believed it helped get audience members into theaters.

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

Subsequent Work and Private World

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

Her voice was also regularly heard on audio broadcasts, particularly the BBC Radio 4 sitcom, which later transitioned to TV, and Ladies of Letters, with actress 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 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 obtained correspondence from one of Queen Elizabeth's security men who confessed that when Scales came on stage, he stood up.

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

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 continued for nine years, was identified as the biggest factor in establishing its dominant market position in the mid-nineties.

Scales subsequently faced moderate critique for participating in the Tesco adverts, when she backed a campaign to prevent neighborhood store closures in her London community.

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

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

Away from acting, {Scales was