Fawlty Towers co-creator and star Connie Booth has shared a moving statement about Prunella Scales, her collaborator on the legendary sitcom, who passed away this week.
Scales played Sybil Fawlty, the strong-willed wife of Basil (John Cleese) and co-manager of their hotel, opposite Booth's sensible waitress and chambermaid Polly Sherman.
The actor had lived with vascular dementia for more than a decade, and died on Monday at the age of 93. Her husband, fellow actor Timothy West, passed away late last year.
Booth shared the following statement with Radio Times:
"Prunella Scales was our luck. As Sybil she became a kind of national figure. She was a wonderfully versatile character actress and the look she devised for Sybil — the overblown bouffant hairdo, the nails and the swooping voice were all her creation.
"She was tiny — those high heels, the perfect little figure. The size of her contrast to John couldn't have worked better as a stage picture.
"Even though she was diminutive, she had a real power which gave a punch to such lines as 'When I married you, I thought I was getting a man — not a nervous breakdown in a tie'.
"As happy as we all were working together, we didn't socialise much off camera. Once I called Prunella about a script change, and her voice was very hoarse. 'Are you OK?'. She gave a kind of laugh, and said she'd been crying all afternoon because Tim [West, her husband] had left that morning for a film job, and he was going to be away for eight weeks. I was touched.
"It was the most personal exchange we'd ever had. Maybe it was naïve of me, but I was surprised at the difference in feeling from the light-hearted quote I'd read in the newspapers about her marriage. 'We stayed together because we've always rather liked each other— and because neither of us can cook'.
"As a performer Prunella was memorable; it's part of life's irony that over time she lost her memory. But even there, she had the capacity to turn bleakness into something bright. 'I can't remember everything,' she said, 'but I can still remember to laugh'."
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