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

The celebrated actress Prunella Scales, who passed away at 93 years old, was regarded as one of Britain's finest comedic performers.

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

It was Sybil's mission throughout her existence to closely monitor her husband Basil described as a "stick insect" - played by John Cleese - between cigarette-fuelled phone conversations with her friend, Audrey.

She was tasked to calm visitors who had been shouted at, completely overlooked or, in some cases, physically confronted by Basil when during his particularly frenzied episodes.

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

And while numerous performers would have removed themselves from excessive identification with one particular character, Scales always expressed her delight in participating of the Fawlty Towers phenomenon.

Early Life and Career Beginnings

Prunella Margaret Rumney Illingworth came into the world in the Guildford area on 22 June 1932.

It was a family deeply in love with the theatre - her mother being, Bim Scales, a former actor who'd abandoned her career 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 prestigious Old Vic drama school and - two years later - secured a position as an assistant stage manager.

This decision angered of her former headmistress in Eastbourne, who had hoped she would apply to Cambridge University and sent correspondence to the theater to tell them so.

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

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

The youthful Prunella also hid her middle-class roots, aware that directors were beginning to look for a new kind of earthy credibility in performers.

Nevertheless she began acquiring small roles in plays, and, during preparations for a role at the Connaught Theatre in Worthing, she encountered actor 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 the character Lydia Bennet in a BBC production of Pride and Prejudice, which featured actor Peter Cushing - more famous for his horror film performances - as Mr. Darcy.

Her initial film appearances came a year later - in lighthearted romance, Laxdale Hall, and David Lean's production Hobson's Choice, opposite Charles Laughton.

Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, she maintained constant employment - appearing on stage, film and television, featuring a short appearance as transport worker, character Eileen Hughes, in the popular soap Coronation Street.

She additionally encountered fellow actor Timothy West.

After what Prunella described as "a gentle courtship involving crosswords and candies", they became a couple, and married in 1963.

Breakthrough and Iconic Roles

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

Scales performed alongside actor Richard Briers, at that time a major celebrity in TV humor. The show proved hugely popular and continued for five seasons.

Then came Fawlty Towers, which elevated her to cultural icon.

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 approached to play Sybil Fawlty but she declined the part and Scales auditioned for the role.

She later remembered that Cleese was a hard taskmaster.

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

Only 12 episodes were ever made.

The first series, which debuted in 1975, didn't immediately attract massive viewership but, as it continued, its hilarious mix of absurd pratfalls and awkward circumstances increased in appeal.

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

Initially, John Cleese and his wife had doubts regarding this approach.

"Once they heard the first reading in rehearsal," Scales remembered, "they were sold on the idea."

In subsequent years, she frequently found herself, requested to portray stern matriarchs when she hankered after elegant characters.

But when asked 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 the paying public into theaters.

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

Later Career and Personal Life

Following Fawlty Towers, Scales maintained her career in television, including an engagement as character Elizabeth Mapp in ITV's Mapp and Lucia.

Her voice was also regularly heard on radio, notably the comedy program After Henry, which later transitioned to TV, and Ladies of Letters, with Patricia Routledge, which evolved into a staple of the program Woman's Hour.

Scales appeared in at two major royal roles; as Queen Elizabeth II in the BBC production of Alan Bennett's work, and as the monarch Queen Victoria in a solo performance that she performed 400 times.

She obtained correspondence from one of Queen Elizabeth's security men who admitted that when Scales appeared, he stood up.

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

In 1995, she began starring as Dotty Turnbull in a series of TV adverts for the retail chain Tesco - which paid her partly in vouchers.

The advertising series, 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 taking part in the Tesco adverts, when she supported an initiative to stop local shops closing in her area of London.

Among her most accomplished roles came in the production 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, an attitude that eventually led to his death.

Away from acting, {Scales was