The Legendary Prunella Scales: Beginning with Fawlty Towers to Great Canal Journeys

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

Despite a long and distinguished 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 throughout her existence to keep tabs on her husband Basil described as a "stick insect" - portrayed by John Cleese - between telephone chats fueled by cigarettes with her companion Audrey.

It fell to her to calm visitors who had been yelled 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 carefully constructed character that stands as a humorous triumph.

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

Early Life and Career Beginnings

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

She belonged to a household deeply in love with the theatre - her mother being, Bim Scales, an ex-actress who'd abandoned her career for family life.

Bright and bookish, following evacuation during the war to the Lake District, Prunella studied at Moira House Girls School in the coastal town of Eastbourne.

In 1949, she won a scholarship to the prestigious Old Vic drama school and - after two years - obtained a role as a stage management assistant.

This decision angered of her previous school principal in her hometown, who had wished she would seek admission to Cambridge University and wrote to the theatre to express this opinion.

During her theatrical training, Scales had been thought of as a developing character performer rather than an obvious Juliet.

"Everyone aspired to resemble Audrey Hepburn," she subsequently informed her chronicler, "but I wasn't attractive and nobody fancied me."

The youthful Prunella concealed her middle-class roots, conscious that producers started seeking authentic working-class realism in performers.

But she started picking up small roles in plays, and, during preparations for a part at Worthing's Connaught Theatre, she encountered 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 Pride and Prejudice, which featured actor Peter Cushing - better known for his horror film performances - as Mr Darcy.

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

Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, she was rarely out of work - performing across multiple mediums, including a brief stint as transport worker, character 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 major television opportunity came with Marriage Lines, a BBC sitcom about recentlyweds, George and Kate Starling.

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 spouse at the time, Connie Booth, had submitted the first script of Fawlty Towers to the BBC.

Performer 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 was a hard taskmaster.

"John, appropriately, demanded strict script adherence, and failure to comply would understandably provoke his irritation."

Merely twelve installments were ever made.

The initial season, which debuted in 1975, didn't immediately attract massive viewership but, with subsequent episodes, its comedic combination of absurd pratfalls and embarrassing situations increased in appeal.

Scales thought hard about portraying Sybil Fawlty, and determined that her social background had to be below Basil's social standing.

Initially, John Cleese and his wife had doubts regarding the treatment.

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

Later in her career, she was, all too often, requested to portray "dragons" and "old bags" when she hankered after more glamorous roles.

However when questioned about what she thought was the high point, Scales had no hesitation in picking Sybil Fawlty.

"It was a tough job," she insisted, "yet I remain proud of my work." She believed it assisted in bringing audience members into theaters.

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

Subsequent Work and Private World

Following Fawlty Towers, Scales continued to work in television, comprising an engagement as the frumpy Elizabeth Mapp in ITV's Mapp and Lucia.

Her vocal talents were frequently featured on radio, particularly the BBC Radio 4 sitcom, which subsequently transferred to television, and the series Ladies of Letters, with actress Patricia Routledge, which evolved into a staple of Woman's Hour.

Scales performed at two major royal roles; 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 obtained correspondence from a royal protection officer who admitted that when Scales came on stage, he stood up.

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

During 1995, she started appearing as character Dotty Turnbull in television commercials for supermarket giant Tesco - which compensated her partially with shopping credits.

The campaign, which ran for nine years, was cited as the biggest factor in propelling it to market leadership in the mid-nineties.

Scales later came in for moderate critique for participating in the commercial campaign, when she supported an initiative to prevent neighborhood store closures in her area of London.

Among her most accomplished roles appeared in the production Breaking the Code, the movie concerning the Bletchley Park wartime codebreakers.

She portrays Alan Turing's mother, who represents a culture that treated homosexual acts as a crime, an attitude that eventually led to his death.

Beyond performance, {Scales was