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The Legendary Prunella Scales: From Fawlty Towers to Great Canal Journeys
Prunella Scales, who died at the age of 93, was considered among Britain's most brilliant comic actors.
Despite an extensive and respected professional journey across theater and film, her legacy will forever be linked as Sybil Fawlty in the 1970s TV comedy, Fawlty Towers.
It was Sybil's mission in life to closely monitor her husband Basil described as a "stick insect" - portrayed by John Cleese - amid cigarette-fuelled phone conversations with her companion Audrey.
It fell to her to placate guests who had been yelled at, totally ignored or, in some cases, physically confronted by Basil when in one of his more manic moods.
Her nightmarish laugh, gravity-defying hairdo and ferocious temper were part of a meticulously crafted persona that ranks as a humorous triumph.
And while many actors would have removed themselves from too close an association with a single role, Scales consistently voiced her pleasure in participating of the Fawlty Towers phenomenon.
Early Life and Career Beginnings
The actress born Prunella Margaret Rumney Illingworth was born near Guildford on June 22nd, 1932.
She belonged to a household profoundly passionate about the theatre - her mother being, Catherine Scales, a former actor who'd given it all up for marriage and children.
Intelligent and studious, following evacuation during the war to England's Lake District, Prunella attended Moira House Girls School in the coastal town of Eastbourne.
During 1949, she won a scholarship to the Old Vic Theatre 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 hoped she would apply to Cambridge and sent correspondence to the theater to tell them so.
During her theatrical training, Scales had been thought of as a junior character actor rather than a natural Juliet candidate.
"We all wanted to look like Audrey Hepburn," she subsequently informed her biographer, "but I wasn't attractive and nobody fancied me."
Young Prunella concealed her middle-class roots, conscious that directors were beginning to look for authentic working-class realism in their actors.
Nevertheless she began acquiring small roles in theatrical productions, and, while rehearsing for a role at Worthing's Connaught Theatre, she encountered Andrew Sachs, who would later star as Manuel, the Spanish waiter, in Fawlty Towers.
There was an early television appearance in the year 1952, as Lydia Bennet in a television adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, which included Peter Cushing - better known for his horror film performances - as Mr. Darcy.
And her first big screen roles followed the next year - in lighthearted romance, Laxdale Hall, and David Lean's production Hobson's Choice, alongside Charles Laughton.
During the late 1950s and early 1960s, she was rarely out of work - performing across multiple mediums, including a brief stint as transport worker, Eileen Hughes, in the popular soap Coronation Street.
She additionally encountered fellow actor Timothy West.
Following what she characterized 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 Marriage Lines, a comedy program about a newly married couple, the Starling couple.
Scales appeared opposite actor Richard Briers, at that time a major celebrity in TV humor. The show proved hugely popular and ran for five years.
Then came the legendary Fawlty Towers, which propelled her to iconic status.
John Cleese and his spouse at the time, Connie Booth, had submitted the first script of Fawlty Towers to the broadcasting corporation.
Actress Bridget Turner had been approached to play the Sybil role but she had turned it down and Scales tried out for the character.
She later remembered that Cleese maintained high standards.
"John, appropriately, demanded strict script adherence, and failure to comply would understandably provoke his irritation."
Merely twelve installments were ultimately produced.
The initial season, which debuted in 1975, didn't immediately attract massive viewership but, as it continued, its hilarious mix of ridiculous physical comedy and embarrassing situations grew in popularity.
Scales thought hard about how to play Sybil Fawlty, and determined that her character's upbringing had to be below Basil's social standing.
Initially, John Cleese and his wife had doubts regarding the treatment.
"After witnessing the initial read-through," recalled Scales, "they were sold on the idea."
Later in her career, she frequently found herself, requested to portray 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, "yet I remain proud of my work." She even thought it helped get audience members into performance venues.
"I believe that audience familiarity with one performance encourages attendance at others," she said.
Subsequent Work and Private World
After Fawlty Towers, Scales continued to work in television, including an engagement as the frumpy Elizabeth Mapp in the series Mapp and Lucia.
Her voice was also regularly heard on radio, notably the comedy program After Henry, 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 two significant royal characters; as Queen Elizabeth in the television drama 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 one of Queen Elizabeth's security men who confessed that when Scales came on stage, he rose to his feet.
"It was a knee-jerk reaction," she explained. "I was thrilled."
During 1995, she began starring as character Dotty Turnbull in television commercials for the retail chain Tesco - which paid her partly in vouchers.
The advertising series, which continued for nine years, was identified as the biggest factor in establishing its dominant market position in the mid-nineties.
Scales later came in for some gentle criticism for taking part in the commercial campaign, when she supported an initiative to stop local shops closing in her London community.
Among her most accomplished roles appeared in Breaking the Code, the movie concerning 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.
Away from acting, {Scales was
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