Prunella Scales
Encyclopedia
Prunella Scales CBE (born 22 June 1932) is an English actress, known for her role as Basil Fawlty's long-suffering wife in the British comedy Fawlty Towers
and her award-nominated role as Queen Elizabeth II in the British film A Question of Attribution
.
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) and Howards End
(1992).
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, Prunella 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 will be starring 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
during the 2005
and 2010 UK general election campaign. She also supports the SOS Children's Villages
charity.
Her biography, Prunella, written by Teresa Ransom, was published by John Murray in 2005. She is a patron of the Lace Market Theatre
in Nottingham
, United Kingdom. In 2005, she named the P&O
cruise ship, Artemis.
Scales is an ambassador of SOS Children's Villages, an international orphan charity providing homes and mothers for orphaned and abandoned children. She supports the charity's annual World Orphan Week campaign, which takes place each February.
, Eastbourne.
Prunella is married to Timothy West
, and has two sons; the elder is actor and director Samuel West
. She also has a stepdaughter, Juliet. She also speaks French She is a supporter of the Labour Party
and fronted their campaign in 2005.
Fawlty Towers
Fawlty Towers is a British sitcom produced by BBC Television and first broadcast on BBC2 in 1975. Twelve television program episodes were produced . The show was written by John Cleese and his then wife Connie Booth, both of whom played major characters...
and her award-nominated role as Queen Elizabeth II in the British film A Question of Attribution
A Question of Attribution
A Question of Attribution is a 1988 one-act stage play, written by Alan Bennett. It was premièred at the National Theatre, London in December 1988, along with An Englishman Abroad. The two plays are collectively called Single Spies....
.
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
Marriage Lines
Marriage Lines was a popular black-and-white British sitcom that aired from 1961 to 1966 which launched the careers of its lead stars, Richard Briers and Prunella Scales. It was originally entitled The Marriage Lines...
starring opposite Richard Briers
Richard Briers
Richard David Briers, CBE is an English actor whose career has encompassed theatre, television, film and radio.He first came to prominence as George Starling in Marriage Lines in the 1960s, but it was in the following decade when he played Tom Good in the BBC sitcom The Good Life that he became a...
. In addition to Fawlty Towers
Fawlty Towers
Fawlty Towers is a British sitcom produced by BBC Television and first broadcast on BBC2 in 1975. Twelve television program episodes were produced . The show was written by John Cleese and his then wife Connie Booth, both of whom played major characters...
, she has had roles in BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
sitcoms
Situation comedy
A situation comedy, often shortened to sitcom, is a genre of comedy that features characters sharing the same common environment, such as a home or workplace, accompanied with jokes as part of the dialogue...
, notably After Henry, Smelling of Roses
Smelling of Roses
Smelling of Roses was a BBC Radio 4 comedy series starring Prunella Scales and written by Simon Brett. There were four series, each of six episodes, broadcast from 2000 to 2003. Scales stars as Rosie Burns, manager of her own event management business in Brighton, "In Any Event"...
and Ladies of Letters
Ladies of Letters
Ladies of Letters is a BBC Radio 4 comedy series starring Patricia Routledge and Prunella Scales, based on the series of books of the same name written by Carole Hayman and Lou Wakefield...
; on television she starred in the London Weekend Television
London Weekend Television
London Weekend Television was the name of the ITV network franchise holder for Greater London and the Home Counties including south Suffolk, middle and east Hampshire, Oxfordshire, south Bedfordshire, south Northamptonshire, parts of Herefordshire & Worcestershire, Warwickshire, east Dorset and...
/Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
series Mapp & Lucia based on the novels by E. F. Benson. She played Queen Elizabeth II in Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett is a British playwright, screenwriter, actor and author. Born in Leeds, he attended Oxford University where he studied history and performed with The Oxford Revue. He stayed to teach and research mediaeval history at the university for several years...
's A Question of Attribution
A Question of Attribution
A Question of Attribution is a 1988 one-act stage play, written by Alan Bennett. It was premièred at the National Theatre, London in December 1988, along with An Englishman Abroad. The two plays are collectively called Single Spies....
. In 1973, Scales teamed with Ronnie Barker
Ronnie Barker
Ronald William George "Ronnie" Barker, OBE was a British actor, comedian, writer, critic, broadcaster and businessman...
in the (original) one-off Meat, which aired as One Man's Meat as part of a series called Seven of One
Seven of One
Seven of One was a British comedy series that aired on BBC2 in 1973. Starring Ronnie Barker, 7 of One is a series of seven separate comedies that would serve as possible pilots for sitcoms. Originally it was to be called Six of One, which Barker planned to follow up with another series called Half...
, also for the BBC. Her film appearances also include The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne is a 1987 drama film made by Handmade Films Ltd. and United British Artists starring Maggie Smith and Bob Hoskins. It was directed by Jack Clayton and produced by Richard Johnson and Peter Nelson with George Harrison and Denis O'Brien as executive producers...
(1987), Stiff Upper Lips
Stiff Upper Lips
Stiff Upper Lips is a broad parody of British period films, especially the lavish Merchant-Ivory productions of the 'eighties and early 'nineties...
(1997) and Howards End
Howards End
Howards End is a novel by E. M. Forster, first published in 1910, which tells a story of class struggle in turn-of-the-century England. The main theme is the difficulties, troubles, and also the benefits of relationships between members of different social classes...
(1992).
In 1997, Scales starred in Chris Barfoot
Chris Barfoot
Chris Barfoot is a British actor, writer/director and producer of film productions.- Biography :...
's science-fiction movie short Phoenix which was first aired in 1999 by NBC Universal
NBC Universal
NBCUniversal Media, LLC is a media and entertainment company engaged in the production and marketing of entertainment, news, and information products and services to a global customer base...
's Sci Fi Channel
Syfy
Syfy , formerly known as the Sci-Fi Channel and SCI FI, is an American cable television channel featuring science fiction, supernatural, fantasy, reality, paranormal, wrestling, and horror programming. Launched on September 24, 1992, it is part of the entertainment conglomerate NBCUniversal, a...
. 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
Rumpole of the Bailey
Rumpole of the Bailey is a British television series created and written by the British writer and barrister John Mortimer which starred Leo McKern as Horace Rumpole, an ageing London barrister who defends any and all clients...
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
Ian Partridge
Ian Partridge CBE is a retired English lyric tenor, whose repertoire ranged from Monteverdi, Bach and Handel, the Elizabethan lute songs, German, French and English songs, through to Schoenberg, Weill and Britten, and on to contemporary works. He formed a renowned vocal-piano duo with his sister...
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
La gazza ladra
La gazza ladra is a melodramma or opera semiseria in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. The libretto was by Giovanni Gherardini after La pie voleuse by JMT Badouin d'Aubigny and Louis-Charles Caigniez....
(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
Vanessa Redgrave
Vanessa Redgrave, CBE is an English actress of stage, screen and television, as well as a political activist.She rose to prominence in 1961 playing Rosalind in As You Like It with the Royal Shakespeare Company and has since made more than 35 appearances on London's West End and Broadway, winning...
and Maximilian Schell
Maximilian Schell
Maximilian Schell is an Austrian-born Swiss actor who won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Judgment at Nuremberg in 1961...
in the mini-series The Shell Seekers
The Shell Seekers (mini-series)
The Shell Seekers is a 2006 mini-series starring Academy Award-winners, Vanessa Redgrave and Maximilian Schell. The British-German co-production was directed by Piers Haggard. It is an adaptation of Rosamunde Pilcher's 1987 novel-of-the-same-name and premiered on Germany's ZDF on December 25th,...
.
On 16 November 2007, Prunella Scales appeared in Children in Need
Children in Need
Children in Need is an annual British charity appeal organised by the BBC. Since 1980 it has raised over £500 million. The highlight of the Children in Need appeal is an annual telethon, held in November. A teddy bear named "Pudsey Bear" fronts the campaign, while Terry Wogan is a long...
, reprising her role as Sybil Fawlty, the new manager who wants to take over Hotel Babylon
Hotel Babylon
Hotel Babylon was a BBC television drama series based on the book of the same name by Imogen Edwards-Jones, that aired from 19 January 2006 to 14 August 2009, produced by independent production company Carnival Films for BBC One...
. She appeared in the audio play The Youth of Old Age, produced in 2008 by the Wireless Theatre Company
Wireless Theatre Company
The Wireless Theatre Company is a not-for-profit online audio theatre company, founded in July 2007 by Mariele Runacre Temple, daughter of actress Jenny Runacre, the company produces radio plays, audio comedy and short stories for free download...
. She appeared in a production of Carrie's War
Carrie's War
Carrie's War is a 1973 children's novel by Nina Bawden, set during the Second World War and following two evacuees, Carrie and her younger brother Nick. It is a common fixture in secondary schools.-Plot:...
, the Nina Bawden
Nina Bawden
Nina Bawden CBE is a popular British novelist and children's writer. Her mother was a teacher and her father a marine.-Life:...
novel, at the Apollo Theatre
Apollo Theatre
The Apollo Theatre is a Grade II listed West End theatre, on Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster. Designed by architect Lewin Sharp for owner Henry Lowenfield, and the fourth legitimate theatre to be constructed on the street, its doors opened on 21 February 1901 with the American...
in 2009.
John Cleese
John Cleese
John Marwood Cleese is an English actor, comedian, writer, and film producer. He achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and performer on The Frost Report...
said in an 8 May 2009 interview that the role of Sybil Fawlty was originally offered to Bridget Turner
Bridget Turner
Bridget Turner is a British actress.She has worked with a number of very famous actors including Peter O'Toole, Elizabeth Taylor, Kirk Douglas, Bernard Blier, Trevor Howard, Bernadette Lafont and Richard Burton and Christina Ricci.On May 8, 2009 John Cleese stated in an interview that Bridget was...
, who "in the worst move of her life" turned down the part, claiming "it wasn't right for her".
She will be starring in the 2011
2011 in film
The year 2011 is notable for containing the release of the most film sequels in a single year, at 27 sequels. The following tables list films that are in production or have completed production and will be released in the United States and Canada at some point in 2011.- Highest-grossing films :...
British live-action 3D family comedy film Horrid Henry: The Movie
Horrid Henry the Movie
Horrid Henry: The Movie is a 3D family comedy film based on the fictional character Horrid Henry. The first British film for children to be shot in 3D, its UK release date was 29 July 2011...
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
Other activities
Scales appeared on a Labour party political broadcastParty political broadcast
A party political broadcast is a short television or radio broadcast made by a political party....
during the 2005
United Kingdom general election, 2005
The United Kingdom general election of 2005 was held on Thursday, 5 May 2005 to elect 646 members to the British House of Commons. The Labour Party under Tony Blair won its third consecutive victory, but with a majority of 66, reduced from 160....
and 2010 UK general election campaign. She also supports the SOS Children's Villages
SOS Children's Villages
SOS Children's Villages is an independent, non-governmental international development organisation which has been working to meet the needs and protect the interests and rights of children since 1949. It was founded by Hermann Gmeiner in Imst, Austria...
charity.
Her biography, Prunella, written by Teresa Ransom, was published by John Murray in 2005. She is a patron of the Lace Market Theatre
Lace Market Theatre
The Lace Market Theatre is a small, independent amateur theatre, located in Nottingham, England. It is owned and operated by The Lace Market Theatre Trust Limited, which is a registered charity.-Origins:...
in Nottingham
Nottingham
Nottingham is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England. It is located in the ceremonial county of Nottinghamshire and represents one of eight members of the English Core Cities Group...
, United Kingdom. In 2005, she named the P&O
P&O Cruises
P&O Cruises is a British-American owned cruise line based at Carnival House in Southampton, England, and operated by Carnival UK. Originally a constituent of the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company, P&O Cruises is the oldest cruise line in the world, having operated the world's first...
cruise ship, Artemis.
Scales is an ambassador of SOS Children's Villages, an international orphan charity providing homes and mothers for orphaned and abandoned children. She supports the charity's annual World Orphan Week campaign, which takes place each February.
Personal life
She attended Moira House Girls SchoolMoira House Girls School
Moira House Girls School is an independent day and boarding school for girls aged from two to eighteen in Eastbourne, East Sussex, England.-History:It was established in 1875 by Charles Ingham at a place called "Moira House"...
, Eastbourne.
Prunella is married to Timothy West
Timothy West
Timothy Lancaster West, CBE is an English film, stage and television actor.-Career:West's craggy looks ensured a career as a character actor rather than a leading man. He began his career as an Assistant Stage Manager at the Wimbledon Theatre in 1956, and followed this with several seasons of...
, and has two sons; the elder is actor and director Samuel West
Samuel West
Samuel Alexander Joseph West is an English actor and theatre director. He is perhaps best known for his role in Howards End and his work on stage. He also starred in the award-winning play ENRON...
. She also has a stepdaughter, Juliet. She also speaks French She is a supporter of the Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
and fronted their campaign in 2005.