Trivia / Fawlty Towers

• Approval of God: There have been several attempts at remaking the series overseas. John Cleese admitted to enjoying the German pilot in a DVD Commentary.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: A popular quote being spread on the internet is Basil allegedly saying "For someone called Manuel, you’re looking terribly ill…". Said line is not in any episodes, and an attempt to track down the source of the quote has only led to an article in The Metro claiming it as a quote from the show. A joke to similar effect is made in "The Anniversary", where Roger puns on Sybil's name as "Syb-ill" after learning of her alleged sickness, then does the same with "Bas-ill" and Manuel then chimes in with "Man-well!"
• California Doubling: The hotel used was actually a country club in Buckinghamshire.
• Completely Different Title: Since the pun in the title is Lost in Translation in most other languages, many broadcasters opted for localized titles when the series was broadcast in non-English speaking countries, some more creative than others:
  • Czech: Hotýlek ("The little hotel")
  • Danish: Halløj på badehotellet ("O-hoy at the seaside hotel")
  • Dutch: Hotel op stelten ("Hotel on stilts")
  • Finnish: Pitkän Jussin majatalo ("Tall Jussi's inn")
  • French: L'Hôtel en folie ("The hotel in madness")
  • German: Das verrückte Hotel ("The crazy hotel")
  • Greek: Ένα τρελό, τρελό ξενοδοχείο ("A crazy, crazy hotel")
  • Hungarian: A Waczak szálló ("The Waczak hostel")
  • Italian: Basil e Sybil ("Basil and Sybil")
  • Norwegian: Hotell i særklasse ("A hotel in a class of its own")
  • Portuguese: A Grande Barraca ("The great shack")
  • Slovak: Hotelík ("The little hotel")
  • Swedish: Pang i bygget ("A blast in the building")
• Creator Backlash:
  • John Cleese named The Builders as "the least good" of the Fawlty Towers episodes that were filmed, owing to a general lack of laughter in the studio on recording day. He recalls that members of the Icelandic Broadcasting Corporation were visiting the studio that day and many of them were in the front row seats, apparently not entirely amused.
  • One American remake, Payne, is this for John Larroquette, who simply calls it a "pain".
• Creator Couple: John Cleese and Connie Booth were married when they made the first season. They divorced by the time of the second one, but still could work together. This has led to rumors that the show ended because of their divorce, by people who didn't do the research about the timing.
• Creator's Favourite Episode:
  • John Cleese's favourite episode is "Basil the Rat", because it was only the true ensemble effort of the cast. Each member of the hotel staff contributed an equal share to the farcical story because the only true antagonist was the rat which, of course, had no lines.
  • Connie Booth's favourite episode was "The Germans".
• The Danza: None of the main characters, but Andre, the restaurant owner from the fifth episode, is played by Andre Maranne.
• Dawson Casting: A mild case, but Sybil's medical chart in "The Germans" gives her age as 33 years old; Prunella Scales was 43 years old when the first series was broadcast.
• Disowned Adaptation: John Cleese was critical of the American remakes.
  • The first, Snavely (also known as Chateau Snavely), starring Harvey Korman and Betty White, was produced by ABC for a pilot in 1978, but the transfer from coastal hotel to highway motel proved too much and additional episodes were never filmed after the completion and review of that pilot. Cleese felt that Korman and White "played it too slow and were embarrassed by the edgy dialogue".
  • The second, Amanda's (also known as Amanda's by the Sea), starred Bea Arthur as a seaside hotel owner along with her son and daughter-in-law. Cleese, in a 2009 interview, described the occasion when American television producers spoke to him about their development:
    The most extraordinary remake was with Bea Arthur. I remember at a party I met these chaps from Viacom, who said they were working on a new Fawlty Towers. My ears pricked up at the sound of cash registers and said, "That's wonderful, are you going to change anything?" They said, "Well we have changed one thing, we've written Basil out". And that's absolutely true, they took Basil and Sybil's lines and gave them all to Bea Arthur.
• Doing It for the Art: John Cleese accepted a very low salary in exchange for creative freedom and the ability to work at his own pace. He and Connie Booth put enormous amounts of effort into the show, with each script requiring months of writing and editing before shooting. Also, the scripts were very dense and ran more than 120 pages at a time a typical half-hour sitcom script was only around 60 pages long. The cast rehearsed everything very thoroughly so that they could complete tapings in just two hours. The sheer exhaustion this caused was the reason why there was a long gap between the two series and the series lay dormant for the next forty-five years.
• Enforced Method Acting: Andrew Sachs took a beating in a few episodes:
  • In "The Germans", Sachs actually suffered second degree burns.
  • In one episode, Basil hits Manuel on the head with a saucepan. Unfortunately, Cleese had an actual saucepan by mistake and hit Sachs on the head with it.
• Fake American: Bruce Boa, who played the American Mr. Hamilton, was actually Canadian.
• Fake Brit: Yes and no. Connie Booth had lived in Britain for so long that she could be said to be actually British. Also played with in "Gourmet Night," where she sings in a perfect but annoying American accent. Her accent also slips out in "The Builders" when Basil drags her by the ear.
• Fake Nationality:
  • Manuel, who's from Barcelona, was played by Andrew Sachs, a German-born British actor. This continues into the German dub, where Sachs dubbed himself, and had fun trying to speak German with a Spanish accent.
  • Mrs. Peignoir, the French guest in "The Wedding Party" was played by Scottish Yvonne Gilan.
  • Raylene Miles, the pretty Australian guest in "The Psychiatrist" was played by the English Luan Peters.
• In Memoriam: After Andrew Sachs passed away in November 2016, the BBC reaired the episode "Communication Problems", with a dedication by John Cleese.
• Inspiration for the Work: The series was inspired when Monty Python stayed at the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay, run by Donald and Beatrice Sinclair. Mr Sinclair's irascible antics included: berating Terry Gilliam (an American who later became a U.K. citizen) for eating his meals in "too American" a way; throwing Eric Idle's suitcase over a wall because of a "bomb scare" (the scare was that Idle had an alarm clock in his suitcase); disbelief at Michael Palin asking to pre-book the Gleneagles TV to catch a show; after Graham Chapman requested an omelet made with three eggs, Sinclair brought him an omelet with three fried eggs perched on top; when asked by Cleese to call for a taxi, he argued with Cleese and took his time calling for the cab. While the rest of the Pythons eventually left to find another hotel, Cleese was fascinated by what he described as "the most wonderfully rude man I'd ever met" and called Connie Booth down to experience it, and the rest is history.
• Multiple Languages, Same Voice Actor: Andrew Sachs, who was born in Germany, reprised Manuel in the German dub, complete with Spanish accent.
• One for the Money; One for the Art: John Cleese's long starring run in advertisements was kicked off because he accepted very low pay in exchange for the freedom to work on scripts at his own pace and deliver episodes only when he felt they were ready.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: Fans claim there is a thirteenth episode that is missing, completed but not aired or in the hands of private collectors; titles given are "the Blackout" or "the Robbers". According to the official book Fawlty Towers Fully Booked, there was never any thirteenth episode and John Cleese confirmed this too.
• Real-Life Relative: John Cleese (Basil) and Connie Booth (Polly) were married when they wrote and acted the first series (1975). By the time of the second, in 1979, they were divorced, although they were on good enough terms to keep working together.
• The Red Stapler: The Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay, which was the place off which Basil and Sybil's hotel was based, ran Fawlty Towers weekends once a month. Guests were looked after by actors playing the parts of Basil, Sybil and Manuel.
• Referenced by...: The Justice League International spinoff, Justice League Europe, introduced Justice League embassies around the world. The London embassy was run by a tall, familiar looking man, with a familiar abrasive personality. His wife and servant, (who appeared less often) look more than a little bit like a couple of other characters.
• Sequel Gap: A third series — written by Cleese and his daughter (but not Connie Booth) and produced by Rob Reiner — was announced in 2023, a whopping forty-four years after the second one ended.
• Streisand Effect: The widow of Donald Sinclair^note Please do not confuse him with veterinarian Donald Sinclair, who was the inspiration for the James Herriot character Siegfried Farnon. That isn't fair to the vet, the man Basil Fawlty was based on, once contacted the British newspapers to complain about how John Cleese had greatly exaggerated her husband's eccentricities and irascibility. Which had the unfortunate effect of prompting more witnesses, including Sinclair's own children, to come forward with even more stories that suggested that, if anything, Cleese had actually been rather generous and respectful to him.
• Technology Marches On: In the days of mobile phones, some of the plot dilemmas would be much easier to resolve. Particularly "The Anniversary", when Sybil misses the surprise party because she thought Basil had forgotten about their anniversary.
  • While it is still hands on knees hilarious today, the entire "Fire" scene in "The Germans". Not only are there no alarms Manuel could ring in the kitchen he just lit on fire, there are also no smoke detectors.
• What Could Have Been:
  • At first, John Cleese didn't want a studio audience when filming the series.
  • Polly was originally written as a philosophy student, but was changed to an art student after the first episode had already been filmed, but not yet released. About five minutes of dialogue for "A Touch of Class" were re-filmed to incorporate Polly's art studies as a plot device which would endure for the remainder of the show's run.
  • Cleese had an idea for a follow-up film. Basil and Sybil would have been invited to Spain to visit Manuel's family, but airport delays and a terrorist hijacking deter them. When Basil is so incensed he overcomes the terrorist in a fit of rage, he takes the terrorist's gun and demands the plane continue to Barcelona. When it lands, he's promptly arrested for hijacking, and is released just in time to catch the flight back home. Cleese nixed the idea because he couldn't make a "Fawlty Towers" Plot flow well enough over ninety minutes.
  • "The Kipper and the Corpse" was going to end with the dead guest's identical twin brother appearing, naturally causing Basil to explode as he thought the man had been pranking him the whole time. Cleese eventually nixed the idea as he couldn't figure out how to keep the humour going after the inevitable moment where the twin catches on that his brother is dead.
  • John Lennon was a big fan of the show and expressed interest in doing at least a walk-on. (After his battles with US immigration had been resolved, he was considering returning to the UK to visit.)
• Write What You Know
  • As previously mentioned, the entire series was inspired by John Cleese spending the night in a hotel with a raving mad owner.
  • Manuel was based on John Cleese's experiences working in restaurants as a teenager, where many of the staff members were cheaply-hired immigrants who didn't speak a word of English.
• Word of Saint Paul: Prunella Scales made up a backstory for Sybil: she was a barmaid who was charmed by a just out of the army Basil, married him, and bought the hotel before realizing what kind of person he was.
• Word of God: John Cleese said that they had little intention of creating catchphrases (Manuel says "¿Qué?" a lot, for instance, because... well, how could that not be the case?), though they did eventually realize that the "He's from Barcelona" line almost got funnier each time they put it in. Especially when Sybil and Polly are eventually forced to use it and the one instance where Manuel himself says "I'm from Barcelona" in the first episode of the second series.
• Write Who You Know: Sybil's distinctive laugh was based on Connie Booth's.
• You Look Familiar: Three guest actors each appear in an episode of both seasons as two different characters:
  • Terence Conoley appears as Mr Wareing in "A Touch of Class" in Season 1 and Mr Johnston in Season 2's "Waldorf Salad".
  • Elizabeth Benson appears as Mrs Heath in "Gourmet Night" in Season 1 and Mrs White in Season 2's "The Kipper and the Corpse".
  • George Lee appears as a delivery man called Bennion in "The Builders" in Season 1 and another delivery man called Kerr in Season 2's "Communication Problems".

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