Career
Throughout her long career, Scales has usually been cast in comic roles. Her early work included the second UK adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (1952) and Hobson's Choice (1954).
Her career break came with the early 1960s sitcom Marriage Lines starring opposite Richard Briers. In addition to Fawlty Towers, she has had roles in BBC Radio 4 sitcoms, notably After Henry, Smelling of Roses and Ladies of Letters; on television she starred in the London Weekend Television/Channel 4 series Mapp & Lucia based on the novels by E. F. Benson. She played Queen Elizabeth II in Alan Bennett's A Question of Attribution. In 1973, Scales teamed with Ronnie Barker in the (original) one-off Meat, which aired as One Man's Meat as part of a series called Seven of One, also for the BBC. Her film appearances also include The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1987), Stiff Upper Lips (1997), Howards End (1992), and BBC Theatre Night in Joe Orton's farce What the Butler Saw (1987) playing Mrs Prentice, where the cast included husband Timothy West with Dinsdale Landen and Tessa Peake-Jones, as well as a cameo in The Boys From Brazil (1978).
In 1997, Scales starred in Chris Barfoot's science-fiction movie short Phoenix which was first aired in 1999 by NBC Universal's Sci Fi Channel. Scales played 'The Client', an evil government minister funding inter-genetic time travel experiments.
In 2003, she appeared as Hilda, "she who must be obeyed", wife of Horace Rumpole in four BBC Radio 4 plays, with her real-life husband playing her fictional husband. Prunella Scales and Timothy West toured Australia at the same time in different productions. Scales appeared in a one-woman show called "An Evening with Queen Victoria", which also featured the tenor Ian Partridge singing songs written by Prince Albert.
Also in 2003, she went to the opera and voiced the role of Magpie, the eponymous thief in a recording of Gioachino Rossini's opera semi-seria in two acts, La gazza ladra (The Thieving Magpie) in which a servant girl is condemned to death for the theft of a silver spoon snatched by a magpie presumably decorating its nest to lure a mate. Scales’ part in the melodrama is tiny but delightful. She neither sang nor spoke; she merely cawed. The rarely-staged opera was performed in English for the Peter Moores Foundation series of opera in English, recorded by Chandos Records Ltd., and released on a 2-disc set of CDs under the catalog number CHAN 3097(2). Numerous fine vocal soloists and the Geoffrey Mitchell Choir joined Scales and the Philharmonia Orchestra under the baton of maestro David Parry in a romp of this work of which only the overture ever appears in the concert house, the rest of the opera being largely neglected.
In 2006, she appeared alongside Academy Award winners Vanessa Redgrave and Maximilian Schell in the mini-series The Shell Seekers.
On 16 November 2007, Scales appeared in Children in Need, reprising her role as Sybil Fawlty, the new manager who wants to take over Hotel Babylon. She appeared in the audio play The Youth of Old Age, produced in 2008 by the Wireless Theatre Company. She appeared in a production of Carrie's War, the Nina Bawden novel, at the Apollo Theatre in 2009.
John Cleese said in an 8 May 2009 interview that the role of Sybil Fawlty was originally offered to Bridget Turner, who "in the worst move of her life" turned down the part, claiming "it wasn't right for her".
She starred in the 2011 British live-action 3D family comedy film Horrid Henry: The Movie as the titular character's Great Aunt Greta.
Prunella Scales has a new short audio story, 'Dandruff Hits The Turtleneck', written by John Mayfield and available for download at www.audible.com
Read more about this topic: Prunella Scales
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“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
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