Fawlty Towers Page 12

  6

  HOW IT ALL CAME ABOUT

  SOME NOTES ON THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

  If ever there was a specific moment in time when Fawlty Towers was conceived, it may very well have been on May 12, 1971. This was the legendary date when the Monty Python cast and crew on location in the Torquay area, checked in at the apparently attractive, modern hotel Gleneagles in Torquay (the name of which was to furtively recur in the Fawlty Towers episode The Builders, where Basil has occasion to tell the Ladies that, “you have to go to Gleneagles for your din-dins tonight.”).

  In most hagiographic literature pertaining to S:t John, the events following their arrival at Gleneagles have been related in pious detail. However, for the benefit of those readers who, in spite of the solid documentation now existing on the subject, still happen to be unfamilar with these crucial events, I shall allow for a short recapitulation.19

  The owners of the hotel Gleneagles were a Mr. and Mrs. Donald Sinclair. By a singular twist of fate, these two good people were predestined to become the prototypes of the legendary Basil and Sybil Fawlty, thus unwittingly the avatars of legend.20

  Apparently a wilful man, Donald Sinclair did not hesitate to impose his whims and convictions on others. Without the ‘slightest’ provocation he vociferously began complaining about the behaviour of his guests. He is said to have suspected Eric Idle of secreting a bomb in his bag, and to have made pejorative remarks on Terry Gilliam’s American (read: uncivilised) way of wielding his knife and fork. When, in addition, it proved impossible to get a drink on the premises, the Monty Python crew decided to de-camp and find a hotel more conducive to conviviality. They all promptly left, with the exception, that is, of John Cleese, who had a strange premonition. He felt that he had to stay and dig deeper into, perhaps even make a bet on a mining concession in this mother lode of golden eccentricity. Connie Booth joined him at the hotel. A solemn vow was made to create something of note out of this encounter with a living phenomenon. The promise became overwhelming reality and even survived the official collapse of their marriage in 1978. In 1979 a second set of six episodes featuring the same cast was broadcast by the BBC.

  However, the now so famous series was not entirely unprecedented. On May 31, 1971 the episode No Ill Feeling in the television comedy series Doctor at Large was aired, the script written by John Cleese. The scenario and the characters were in many ways rough prototypes of the ones later developed and refined in Fawlty Towers. There was, apart from the main character, Dr. Upton, a gimcrack hotel, a capricious and irritable hotel owner, an overbearing bore, and an array of elderly ladies. Producer Humphrey Barclay felt that the episode contained within it the seed of a whole series, but John Cleese did not agree at the time. So the idea was to lie dormant until the day Cleese decided to leave the Monty Python group to its own devices. Eager to work more closely with his wife on a writing project, opportunity knocked on their door when Jimmy Gilbert, head of light entertainment at BBC, commissioned them to write a 20-minute pilot episode about anything they fancied. Searching their memories they again saw Mr. Sinclair rear his ominous head over the roofs and pinnacles of Torquay. Soon the silhouette of the Towers themselves began to loom in the background.

  The twelve episodes of Fawlty Towers were subsequently written and filmed in two different time periods — an interval of almost five years separating them. But in spite of this extended interlude, the series came to reveal an extraordinary homogeneity that exists parallel to its advancing development from A Touch of Class, which was the first to be televised on September 19, 1974, to Basil the Rat, the last, which was aired October 25, 1979 (it was supposed to be televised that spring, but union action — to Cleese’s immense joy — resulted in its postponement).

  In some instances the recording sessions were just as full of drama as the action they were supposed to depict. A famous anecdote relates that Andrew Sachs in connection with the shooting of The Wedding Party, received such a nasty blow on his head from the frying-pan wielded by Basil, that he was “left woozy for two days.” (It has not been revealed if Cleese ever made reparation to his long-suffering deuteragonist, for instance by sending him flowers, or even a bottle of whisky adorned with a card saying: “Cheer up, for God’s sake!”)

  Later, during the shooting of the first series, Sachs was going to see more misfortune come his way. In The Germans, his role figure Manuel was supposed to set himself on fire when meddling with the kitchen stove. Andrew Sachs’ dedication to the task was such that he burnt himself badly and sustained severe scarring to his shoulder. Set against the total fee of £450 Sachs is said to have received for his work throughout the entire series, the £700 he was granted in compensation for his injuries represents a sizeable award.

  Relevant sources are not quite unanimous on this point, but general consensus seems to have accepted as credible the proposition that each episode had to go through about ten drafts and four months of work before being presented to the viewing public.

  What about the financial reward then? Well, what Connie Booth initially got out of it, I have been unable to find out. John Cleese on the other hand has candidly confessed in an interview that he received £1,000 for the first series of six episodes in 1975, and £9,000 for the second in 1979. Considering the tremendous increase in popularity the show has known since that time, any reasonable percentage on its diffusion and distribution in the form of televised reruns, video cassettes, DVDs, printed scripts, records, etc., must amount to some quite astounding figure. However, in view of the insignificant amount of money initially set aside to finance production, we can probably rule out pecuniary gain as being of much interest to either John Cleese or Connie Booth. As is the case with all works of genuine inspiration, not to say of pure genius, the edifice of Fawlty Towers appears to have been erected ‘for its own sake.’

  PRODUCTION, SETS AND COSTUME

  The general mise en scene of all Fawlty Towers episodes is invariably the same, the interior of the hotel comprising the same few rooms: lobby, dining-room, kitchen and lounge. In addition to this familiar environment there are a few exterior scenes as well. According to online and other sources, these outdoor scenes were all shot on location at a villa in the small village of Woburn Green, near High Wycombe, a town midway between London and Oxford, in Buckinghamshire. The villa itself was called the Woburn Grange Country Club in Bourn End. The British Location Guide states that it was later an Indian restaurant and then a nightclub, called ‘Basil’ of all things. The entire house was ravaged by fire some years ago and thereafter demolished. No vestige of its glorious past remains today, and there are eight new buildings on the site (there is a site on the Internet where one can see photos of how the area actually looks today).

  There are a few scenes in which parts of the town itself form the backdrop: the street where André’s restaurant is located as well as the street in which Basil is seen trashing the car (Gourmet Night). There is also an outdoor scene in A Touch of Class where we see Polly leave the bank and Mr. Brown watch Lord Melbury as he leaves the jeweller’s shop. John Margolis (Cleese Encounters) states that the outdoor scene in which Basil is seen driving his car to Andrés restaurant was shot while the car was driven by Cleese down a main street near Acton. Fawlty Towers Fully Booked in turn certifies that André’s restaurant itself was located at 294, Preston Road in Harrow, whereas the trashing-the-car scene in the same episode was filmed in Mentmore Close in Kenton, north London.

  As for the one remaining town scene from A Touch of Class, I have been unable to find out where it was filmed. Since it is of course out of the question that a BBC film crew on a low-budget mission would have gone all the way down to the English Riviera for a few seconds worth of real Torquay ambience, we might confidently surmise that these images, like all the other outdoor scenes, were captured in some location close to London.

  One thing is for sure, however. The lanky person who steps out of Joseph Lambert’s jewellers shop, and whom we are supposed to take for
Lord Melbury, is not Michael Gwynn, who plays his lordship in the indoor scenes at the hotel. First of all, the chap in the street has no moustache. Secondly, he wears glasses — obviously with the intention of disguising himself while ‘on business’ in town. Even if this person had appeared with a moustache and without glasses, he still would have looked very different from the other Lord Melbury. His posture and body movements characterise an altogether different person. In fact, this Lord Melbury is an impostor of the impostor — an illusion within the illusion which intensifies the metaphysical vertigo symptomatic of our perception of the Towers.

  There might be a practical reason for this apparent anomaly. According to producer/director of the first Fawlty Towers series (as well as of the Monty Python shows from 1969 onward), John Howard Davies, all inserts were filmed weeks before the production of the actual shows and then painstakingly slotted in. Possibly Michael Gwynn was not available (or not even yet asked to play the role!) on the day when the outdoor scenes of the first episode were to be filmed. In other words, somebody had to impersonate him. Avoiding close up photography of the ‘stunt’s’ face, John Howard Davies thought he could get away with the deception. In the normal way of things he would have done, of course, but then he couldn’t possibly have foreseen that while shooting the pilot episode of a new British sitcom, the entire team was about to make history, and put sleepy old Torquay on the world map.

  Another and more important question is of course, “Where Were the indoor scenes filmed?” The answer is: in the BBC studios. Although we, the spectators, are not supposed to notice this, we get more than subtle hints about it. For example, we never witness any actor enter the hotel frontally when the camera picks him or her up from within the lobby. They always enter and exit to and from the right, behind the wall next to the entrance. This door is always curiously open in the daytime, regardless of British weather conditions.

  A further indication is that when doors are slammed, or Basil and Manuel are engaged in violent goings-on, we often see the walls wobble and visibly give way. This shows that at least some of them are really quite insubstantial — probably no more than mobile room-dividers (see, for example, The Builders). Upon closer scrutiny (see Basil’s climbing the ladder “to see girl in room” in The Psychiatrist) the windows too turn out to be very frail. And they don’t have the transparency of ordinary glass, but seem to be made of plastic.

  In addition, the outdoor scenery, as viewed through the main entrance from the lobby, is in all episodes projected on to screens on which the background vegetation continually changes. The same screens also provide exterior background through the windows of the bar and dining-room. The sea “in between the land and the sky” is a projection of this kind as well. We may also notice that although these screens always present exteriors of lush vegetation (in summer time), most of the outdoor scenes have obviously been shot during winter, as there are no leaves on the bigger trees, and it is cold and damp.

  Neither do we ever see any of the walls or windows on the side of the lobby facing the entrance, or of the dining-room wall opposite the kitchen, or of the wall in the bar opposite the one facing the car park and the garden. On this showing we may safely conclude that the staircase leading to the upper rooms was no more than another means of entry and exit for the actors, since, in reality, the studio set featured seven separate movable ‘rooms’, each one of which must have been like a traditional theatre facing the spectator on one of its four sides. This vector must have been open to accommodate crew, sound equipment and cameras. Thus, the set, as we see it, most likely coincided with the directors line of vision, probably identical with that of the live audience as well.

  The audience, yes. The twelve episodes were actually recorded in marathon Sunday sessions, beginning with camera rehearsals in the morning — by then the ensemble had already rehearsed without cameras for a week. By 4:00 on the Sunday afternoon it was time for dress rehearsal and the recordings with the live audience were usually not finished until around 10:00 p.m. Each episode required the incredible number of four hundred different camera shots, meaning that there was on average a cut every fourth second, “Almost double compared to other BBC shows, and enough to make American actors grow pale,” according to John Cleese (Cleese Encounters). In other words, the procedures leading up to the finished product — even if we leave out the elaborate plotting, writing and rewriting of each episode — were much more complicated and drawn out than for any other British sitcom of that time. Who knows, maybe Fawlty Towers still holds the record on camera angles for any situation comedy in the world?

  After this brief résumé of the technical aspects of the production, let us now turn our attention to the interior décor. We should then first of all bear in mind that the chronological sequence in which the episodes of the two series were shown —beginning with A Touch of Class, followed by The Builders etc. — does not necessarily reflect the order in which they were produced. The fire alarm, for instance, gives us a clue. Conspicuous by its absence in the first four episodes, it is first seen in Gourmet Night (the fifth episode to be shown) although it has no part in the action here. Conversely, in the sixth and last episode of the first series, The Germans, the alarm bell does indeed play a very essential role. So, although broadcast first, Gourmet Night was in all likelihood filmed after The Germans, since it would have made absolutely no sense to introduce an alarm bell on stage without putting it to any use.

  The kitchen door installed in the second episode (The Builders) is paradoxically already in place in the first episode (A Touch of Class). However in this opening episode it is located much further to the right, thus allowing a dark wooden bench to fit into the space between the door and the staircase. In later episodes this space has disappeared, and the wooden bench is consequently placed to the right of the door (see for example The Wedding Party, number three, and The Hotel Inspectors, number four). At the beginning of The Builders (number two), there is no kitchen door at all, and the door to the left of the main entrance is still there. This door is in place in A Touch of Class too. It is only after The Builders that it disappears altogether — all rather confusing!

  Still, in spite of there being a kitchen door in A Touch of Class and none at the beginning of The Builders, there are good reasons to believe that the former really was the first episode to be filmed. One piece of evidence in support of this is that the hotel sign (shown at the beginning of all but one episode, The Germans, to the accompaniment of the string quartet playing the Fawlty Towers theme) is virtually intact, the only anomaly being a final sagging‘S.’ In most of the following episodes the sign has been exposed to some more or less obscene word-play. Sometimes there is just one letter missing; in The Psychiatrist we catch a glimpse of the mischievous boy responsible for the mutilations. A list of the semiotic mutations of the hotel sign is given below in the order of appearance.

  A Touch of Class: FAWLTY TOWERS (with sagging S)

  The Builders: FAWLTY TOWER (with sagging L)

  The Wedding Party: FARTY TOWER (with sagging W)

  The Hotel Inspectors: FAW TY TO WER

  Gourmet Night: WARTY TOWELS

  The Germans: (Sign not shown)

  Communication Problems: FAWLTY TOWER (with sagging L)

  The Psychiatrist: WATERY FOWLS (with boy seen manipulating the letters)

  Waldorf Salad: FLAY OTTERS

  The Kipper and the Corpse: FATTY OWLS

  The Anniversary: FLOWERY TWATS

  Basil the Rat: FARTY TOWELS

  As we can see, the correct spelling of the hotel name appears only once — in A Touch of Class. We may infer from this that it was the first episode to be filmed, and there are other indications that such was the case. The quality of the colour reproduction is conspicuously poor. This is the only episode in which the wallpaper in the lobby appears to be light green and the floor red. In all other episodes the first is as yellow as ripe wheat, and the other a dark-bluish green. There is actually a brownish tinge to a
ll the colours in this episode, a defect that is absent in the following shows. A Touch of Class is also the only episode that features a rack of postcards at the far end of the lobby desk.

  The picture of the ship above the door (blocked off in The Builders) is not the same as in that episode either. In the former it looks like a brig, in the latter like a clipper. One last detail. When Danny Brown addresses Basil as “waiter”, the latter turns and in so doing lets us see the face of Miss Tibbs. I have stopped my video recorder here and, shot by shot, scrutinised the image of the lady. My conclusion is that it may very well be Miss Tibbs, but I can swear that the actress playing her is not Gilly Flower. It must be an impostor — another one!

  The brown and somewhat patinated tinge mentioned above has largely disappeared in The Builders. Also missing in subsequent episodes is the sideboard with breakfast china to the left of the swinging doors that lead to the kitchen. The lighting has been enhanced, and it really seems as if the quest for a better class of clientele (the raison d’etre of the first episode) had made the hotel residents aware of the fact that they must conform to a certain standard. A noticeable ‘touch of class’ has been brought to the scenario by the con-artist Lord Melbury. From then onward all uncertainties are gone. The ship has been launched; it has left the muddy waters of the harbour and embarked on its epic voyage over seas of laughter.

  The hotel’s interior décor thus keeps changing a little from one episode to the next. But after the two first shows such variation is very slight within each set of six shows. Considering that a near five-year gap separates the first from the second series, it is not surprising that observable changes would occur between The Germans (number six in the first series) and Communication Problems (number one in the second series).

  And here’s the surprise: probably not one single piece of furniture from the first series survives into the second. The reason why we do not at once notice this is that each piece has been replaced by very carefully chosen similar items. (That the grandfather clock, exceptionally, had to be moved to the side of the entrance hall in The Germans is readily explained: there had to be room for Basil’s stage business with the moose’s head). The antique grandfather clock in the second series is not the same as the clock in the first, the ‘antlers’ of the former being much more pointed, actually veritable devil’s horns! The barometer of the first series is more elaborately carved than its successor. The banker’s desk in the office is black in the first series, brown and bigger in the second. The lacquered wooden glass cabinet in the hallway leading to the lounge is not the same. The chairs and the tables in the lounges are different, as is the slot machine. Similar changes can be observed in the dining-room and in the lobby, where chairs and tables have changed places.21