Fawlty Towers Page 10

  In The Hotel Inspectors Sybil tries to persuade Basil to try to be a bit more courteous to their guests. Sybil: “This is a hotel Basil, not a Borstal.”

  British viewers will know that this refers to the first prison specifically for young offenders situated near Borstal in the county of Kent. Later, the borstal system, or simply Borstal, came to signify any correctional institution for young criminals, whether in Kent or any other part of the country.

  In The Germans, a fire extinguisher goes off in Basil’s face and knocks him out. As he comes to, he finds himself in the same hospital ward as Sybil, and begins to recall the event. He gets quite excited about the unreliability of the emergency equipment. “I mean, what is the point of a fire extinguisher? It sits there for months, and when you actually have a fire, when you actually need the bloody thing it blows your head off! I mean, what is happening to this country? It’s bloody Wilson!”

  Younger Fawlty Towers aficionados might find this information pertinent. Harold Wilson succeeded the deceased Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell in 1963 and in the following year, the Labour Party having won the General Election, became prime minister. Harold Wilson’s premiership was to last for thirteen years, during which the country was bedevilled by repeated strikes. In 1976 Wilson unexpectedly resigned and James Callaghan became Prime Minister. It was during Callaghan’s term that the ‘winter of discontent’ cast its pall over the country, and the way was left clear for the Conservatives, under Margaret Thatcher, to win the election of 1979. The vehemence of her economic reforms must be seen against the background of the demoralisation brought about by one and a half decades of union action, which occurred mostly during the stewardship of Harold Wilson. This is the reason why the Major always intones, “Another car strike” on first glancing at the newly arrived newspaper. Basil goes a step further and holds Wilson personally responsible for just about anything that goes wrong in society — and in his personal life, too. The weakening of the work ethic, the increased power of the working class, the general decline of society and morals, are all ultimately attributable to a socialist Britain of which Harold Wilson is the symbol.

  Even without knowing that The Germans was the last episode in the first series of six shows from 1974, we could deduce that it must be from the fact that Wilson resigned in 1976. In the 1979 series we find a reference to Margaret Thatcher. Mr. Johnson, in The Psychiatrist, compares the guide book What’s on in Torquay? with other books supposedly “one of the worlds shortest”, such as Great English Lovers or The Wit of Margaret Thatcher. Basil is not charmed by Johnsons remark.

  Speaking of Johnson, Basil makes the ironic assumption that the woman in Johnsons room is Mrs. (Lady Bird) Johnson, the wife of the late president of the United States, today mostly remembered for his unflinching ambition to crush communist North Vietnam. It is also in this context that we must place the U.S. foreign policy adviser and diplomat Henry Kissinger, to whom reference is made on no fewer than three occasions. The first is in connection with Mr. Hutchison in The Hotel Inspectors. Hutchison: “If anybody wants me, I’ll be in the lounge.” Basil: “Anyone in particular? ... I mean, Henry Kissinger?” The second reference is in Gourmet Night, when Basil revenges himself for the insults he has to endure from the spoiled brat in the company of his elderly parents in the dining-room. The boy wants ordinary salad cream instead of real mayonnaise. Basil: “Still, I’ll tell him (chef) to get some salad cream. You never know when Henry Kissinger is going to drop in.” The third mention of the name appears latet in the same episode. Sybil: “Who's out?” Basil: “Kurt! Who do you think — Henry Kissinger?”

  Earlier on in this tirade Basil alluded to another celebrity. Mrs. Heath: “May I ask why you don’t have proper salad cream. I mean, most restaurants —” Basil: “Well, the chef only buys it on special occasions, you know, gourmet nights and so on, but when he’s got a bottle — ah! — he’s a genius with it. He can unscrew a cap like Robert Carrier.”

  Robert Carrier was an American cookery writer who in 1963 became world-famous on the publication ofhis book, The Old and the New Classic Great Dishes of the World. With his subsequent culinary television-performances in Britain during the 1970s, he added to the growing British interest in cookery, at that time still deeply entrenched in the prawn cocktail, steak, chips and salad, Black Forest gateau regimen. In his television shows he excelled in making sumptuous meals — so Basil’s reference to his way with a bottle of salad cream may be taken as not only ironic but inappropriate too. Robert Carrier remains to this day a renowned chef and the distinguished author of many cookery books.17

  Another American celebrity to be alluded to in the series is the actor James (Jimmy) Cagney (1899-1986), who was born on New York’s Lower East Side and began his film career in the 1920s. Mr. Cagney mostly distinguished himself in ‘tough guy’ roles. At the moment when Basil’s Hitler impression can no longer be staved off, Polly nevertheless attempts to divert him by shouting, “No, Mr. Fawlty! Do Jimmy Cagney instead.” “You dirty rat,” etc. (The Germans).

  A direct quote from early American sit-com entertainment is Basil’s remark to the Major, who once again has some difficulty in understanding what Basil requires from him. Basil: (trying to convey the ‘official’ version of the rat hunt to the Major) “Yes, and the starling was in the garden and the rat was nowhere at all.” The Major: “Well, I didn’t see him.” Basil: (moving off) “Say good night to the folks, Gracie.” This line is taken from the Burns and Allen Show, starring George Burns and Gracie Allen, which was very popular in the 1950S-60s. A pivotal feature of the show was Gracie’s use of ‘feminine’ logic, and George’s ironic bemusement. The show would end with a torrent of Gracie’s ‘rationalisations’ of the situation built up in the half-hour of each episode. As she ended, George would say the immortal words to her, kindly and long-sufferingly, but meaning to shut her up. Gracie died in the 1960s. George Burns was to become one of America’s most enduring senior actors; he kept acting well into his nineties and lived to be over a hundred years old.

  Perhaps most intriguing of all the scenes in the series that contain references to celebrities, dead or alive, is the one featured in the following dialogue between Basil and the Major in Communication Problems.

  Basil: Look, you were in your best suit.

  The Major: Was I? Oh yes, of course — I went to the theatre, of course.

  Basil: No, no.

  The Major: Yes, with Winnie Atwell.

  Basil: Winnie Atwell?

  The Major: Well, Marjorie Atwell. I always called her Winnie because she looked like Winnie.

  Basil: She’s not black.

  The Major: Black? Churchill wasn’t black.

  It is obvious that the Winnie Atwell referred to here is the colourful and very popular West Indian singer who had such success in Britain during the 1950s and early 1960s. Winnie was likewise the nickname of Winston Churchill. However, I have been utterly unable to find out who Marjorie Atwell was. Unless we are simply to read this dialogue as a deliberate piece of obfuscation, there remains, as far as I am able to tell, no other alternative than to suppose that Marjorie Atwell was a person who lived in Torquay, or perhaps acted at a theatre there. She seems to be familiar to both Basil and the Major. In contrast to the West Indian singer, she apparently was Caucasian. Consequently, when Basil infers that the said Marjorie isn’t black, the Majors memory again becomes confused. He takes a leap of faith, freely associating black with a Winnie who has now become Churchill, and only him, where Basil’s previous statement, “She’s not black,” relates in his mind to good old ‘Winnie’, who of course was neither a woman, nor black.

  Winnie Atwell was a well known figure on British television as well, but not all such references are to celebrities of film and television. Some have decidedly more of a British domestic character, and an even larger portion of them are in one way or another of an historical nature. The episode The Kipper and the Corpse is particularly rich in references of these kinds. Mr. Leeman, who
is eventually found dead in his bed, hurts Basil’s sense of decorum by not responding to his cheerful, “Good night.” Sybil defends Leeman, knowing that he didn’t feel too well. Basil: “He only had to say ‘good night’, dear. It’s not the Gettysburg Address.”

  The Gettysburg Address was the famous speech Abraham Lincoln gave on November 19, 1863 to the soldiers who had fought and survived the battle outside Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, against General Robert E. Lee and his Confederate troops. In many ways the victory of the Union at Gettysburg marks a major turning-point in the history of the United States.

  Seeing that another car strike is in the headlines, Basil of course cannot refrain from commenting on it while preparing to deliver breakfast to Mr. Leeman, by now stone dead. Basil: (to himself more than anybody else) “Another car strike, would you believe it? They ought to get Butlin’s to run our car factories.”

  Although ‘bloody’ Wilson was no longer in office when Basil uttered this, the target of his sarcasm remains the same. Butlin’s is a British company that owns holiday camps and amusement parks providing holiday makers with “the complete leisure experience”. The best elucidation of the implications of his mentioning Butlin’s in this context is given by Basil himself in his inadvertent ‘funeral address’ to Mr. Leeman: “Taxpayers pay ’em millions each year, they get the money, go on strike. It’s called socialism. I mean if they don’t like making cars why don’t they get themselves another bloody job, designing cathedrals or composing viola concertos? The British Leyland Concerto in four movements, all of ’em slow, with a four-hour tea-break in between. I’ll tell you why, ’cos they’re not interested in anything except lounging about on conveyor belts, stuffing themselves with my money.”

  He returns to the subjects of leisure and holidays in the very next scene. Just before he’s forced to realise that Leeman is irreversibly dead, he still believes that the others are talking about Mrs. Chase’s aggressive lap dog. He says: “What’s the matter with that dog?” Manuel: ... “He’s dead.” Basil: “Well, he’s certainly struggling for life at the moment. A dead dog in the breakfast room, eh? Egon Ronay’d knock off a star for that.”

  Egon Ronay is a famous writer on British travel, hotels and restaurants. His Guide is roughly comparable to the French Guide Michelin. To have one star removed — if you ever had one — from this guide is to be officially demoted in the hierarchy of tourism.

  Military references, such as to the Gettysburg Address, abound throughout the series. The episode we are discussing, The Kipper and the Corpse, uses a reference straight after the Egon Ronay allusion. Dr. Price: (to Basil) “You mean you didn’t realise that the man was dead?” Basil: “People don’t talk that much in the morning ... Well look, I’m just delivering a tray, right? If the guest isn’t singing, ‘Oh, What a Beautiful Morning’ I don’t immediately think, ‘Oh, there’s another one snuffed it in the night — another name in the Fawlty Towers Book of Remembrance, I mean, this is a hotel, not the Burma Railway.”

  The building of the Burma Railway — also called ‘the railway of death’ — has been commemorated to great effect in the famous film The Bridge over the River Kwai, with Alec Guinness in the principal role. During World War II, prisoners of war, mostly British, were used as forced labour by the Japanese army to complete the construction of a railway from Burma to Thailand. Death by accident, exhaustion, execution and pestilence was rampant. In fact, the entire remaining work-force was probably saved from death by the explosion of the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, which forced the capitulation of the Japanese army and the eventual repatriation of its prisoners.

  Another military conflict ever-present in Basil's memory is the 1950-53 Korean war, in which he supposedly sustained a shrapnel wound in his leg. As we all know, it is when Basil finds himself in very difficult situations that he plays this last card. The only ‘impartial’ evidence adduced in the series to verify his actual participation in this war (twenty years before the series features him in the role of the hotel owner) is Sybil’s remark to the young couple in The Wedding Party. Basil: “I fought in the Korean war, you know. I killed four men ...” (he leaves huffily). Sybil: “He was in the catering corps. He poisoned them.” There is no way of telling which, if either, of these comments has any truth in it. It might well be that to impress Sybil at a time when they were still in love, Basil explained a scar on his knee by saying that it was a Korean war wound. At the time Sybil was inclined to believe him, and it is a strange fact that she never suspects him of fraud when he starts his knee routine. For Basil it has remained a last resort, although he never set foot on the Korean peninsula, least of all in a war.

  On the other hand, a roll-call of historical battlefields is featured in The Anniversary. Sybil, deeply hurt by what she believes to be Basil’s forgetfulness of their wedding anniversary, asks him whether the date April 17 stirs any memories. Basil: “Anniversary of the battle of Agincourt? Trafalgar? Crécy? Poitiers? Yom Kippur?”

  Let us take a brief look at these allusions, and see what the battles mentioned signified.

  At Agincourt, in the present-day French departement of Pas-de-Calais, English soldiers under the command of Henry V won a triumphant victory in 1415 against the French army under d’Albret.

  At Crécy-en-Ponthieu, the splendid and knightly French army, commanded by Philip VI, was defeated by an English peasant army reinforced with ‘them yeomen bowmen’ in 1346. The outcome of this battle struck a powerful blow at the continental feudal system.

  At Cape Trafalgar, on the southern Spanish Atlantic coast, Lord Nelson in 1805 secured Britain’s dominion over the seas by breaking through the battle-line of the Spanish-French fleet, defeating it utterly.

  At Poitiers, the Moors (Arabs), who had conquered the entire Iberian peninsula and much of France, were defeated and prevented from expanding farther north into Europe by the Frankish troops in the year 732.

  Yom Kippur is not primarily a battlefield, nor a famous king or general. It is first and foremost the name of the celebration held on the Jewish day of atonement. However, in 1973 a skirmish between Israelis and Arabs escalated into a war situation, known in history books as the October War, but also nicknamed Yom Kippur. Basil is in all likelihood referring to this.

  Battlefields are not the only historical references. In The Builders, Basil gets an unexpected call from O’Reilly. Upon Sybil’s return to the hotel desk, where he’s making the call, he does his best to conceal the real content of their conversation. Basil: “Oh, good, that’ll be nice, won’t it? I mean, we’ve waited for that wall about as long as Hadrian. No, Hadrian. The Emperor Hadrian — oh, it doesn’t matter, I’ll explain it next week. Goodbye.”

  What Basil is referring to is the 73-mile-long wall, with its numerous fortifications, that the Roman Emperor Hadrian built in 122-126 AD. The wall ran between present-day Bowness and Wallsend, and was designed not so much as a defensive bulwark against the Scottish tribes, whom the Romans considered impossible to civilise, but more as a base for northern army patrols. There may be an obscure point (coincidence) here, in that the ape-like Johnson’s mother is coming down by train from Newcastle (the major northern city, near the wall, on the east coast) to visit grandchildren in Torquay (The Psychiatrist).

  In Communication Problems, Basil tries to rid himself of Mrs. Richards as she urges him, once again, to call the police. In order to explain why he hasn't managed to get hold of them, he sarcastically throws in “They’re very busy today ... there was a lot of blood shed at the Nell Gwynn tea-rooms last night.” Apart from the obvious fact that a public tea-room in Torquay is perhaps the most unlikely crime scene one could possibly imagine, the name of the establishment nevertheless hides an allusion to a somewhat candid chapter in English history, shrouded not so much in legend as in pure gossip. Nell Gwynn (1650-1687) was an actress, more notorious for her beauty and coarse wit than for her acting talent. In astonishingly short time she worked herself up from being an orange seller at the Royal
Theatre to become the favourite mistress of King Charles II, hence her nickname, Lady of the Bedchamber. She even bore the king a son, Charles Beauclerk, Duke of Saint Albans. It is obvious that Basil, by mentioning her name in connection with a (perhaps imaginary) tea-room, sees an obvious link between her reputation and the kind of ‘light’ conversation likely to be entertained in such a place.

  In the same episode, Basil, still hopeful about the money he has just won on the horse, gets into an unusually happy mood. Before rubbing his hands singing: “The Camptown ladies sing this song, doo-daa, doo-daa, the Camptown race track five miles long, doo-daa, doo-daa-day ...,” he prepares a snack for himself while simultaneously asking the chef: “Do you like Cavalleria Rusticana, Terry?” Terry: “I never had it, Mr. Fawlty.”

  The Italian composer Pietro Mascagni (1863-1945) wrote countless operas, but only one of them is still regularly staged and universally hailed as a masterpiece, Cavalleria Rusticana. A famous Intermezzo from this one-act opera is often played separately and in a multitude of arrangements. Terry’s answer clearly reveals that he has no idea what Basil is referring to. He thinks it’s like paella ...

  Speaking of music, it should be mentioned that the melody introducing each episode was composed by a certain Dennis Wilson and arranged for string quartet by Byron Olson (not the lord this time either!). Other musical themes featured in the series include the opening bars of Johannes Brahms’ third symphony (A Touch of Class), Pjotr Tchaikowsky’s Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from The Nutcracker Suite (The Builders), and a fragment of one of Chopin’s Ballades (The Wedding Party).