As Manuel, the hapless Spanish waiter at a certain faded Torquay hotel, Andrew Sachs created such exquisite comedy that it’s impossible to imagine any other actor in the role.
And that’s a vision that Fawlty Towers creator John Cleese originally arrived at more than 50 years ago, when he first worked on scripts for the now classic sitcom.
The Monty Python star was so confident that Sachs would be the “perfect” Manuel that he threatened to stop writing until the actor signed on the dotted line.
Cleese told The Mail on Sunday: ‘I had seen Andrew in Alan Bennett’s Habeas Corpus [in London’s West End] and realized I had discovered a great farce artist. Of course we could have found others, but they wouldn’t have been as perfect as Andrew, so I dug in my heels.’
Documents in the BBC archives reveal executives’ concerns that securing Sachs held up the scripts, which Cleese was writing with his then wife Connie Booth, who later played chambermaid Polly in the series.
Sachs was trying to make it as a stage actor at the time and had followed his role in Habeas Corpus with a leading role in the farce No Sex Please We’re British.
BBC bosses launched a charm offensive to woo Sachs amid fears for the future of the sitcom.
In a letter to the actor’s agent, dated February 11, 1975, John Howard Davies, who produced and directed the first series of Fawlty Towers, stressed the need for a response. He added: ‘John Cleese finds himself at the point where he has to postpone writing the series as he considers it impossible until the situation surrounding Andrew Sachs is cleared up.’
John Cleese was so confident that Andrew Sachs would make the ‘perfect’ Manuel that he threatened to stop writing until the actor signed on the dotted line
Andrew Sachs as Manuel in Fawlty Towers – 1981
Three days later, Davies wrote again outlining what was at stake. He wrote: ‘You know how much we want Andrew Sachs for the John Cleese series… I also have to try to convince John Cleese to write the series in the hope that Andrew Sachs will be available. However, John Cleese tells me he likes to write for the actor who will play the role.’
The documents, revealed as the show prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary next year, provide no details about Sachs’ decision to join the show.
But in a 2014 interview, two years before he died at the age of 86, Sachs revealed that he was concerned about being able to speak the Spanish accent, and asked Cleese if he could make the waiter speak German. ‘No! If you were German you would be very good at things,” the star told him. “He must be Spaniard.”
Other letters in the BBC’s Written Archives Center show that Cleese did not always get his way in casting. The central role of Mr Hutchinson in the episode The Hotel Inspectors, ultimately played by Bernard Cribbins, was originally offered to The Good Life star Richard Briers.
In a letter dated July 10, 1975, Davies told Briers: ‘The role of Hutchinson was written with you in mind from John. I know it’s rude to ask you if you want to play it. We would love to have you, but we will understand very well if you don’t.’
Documents in the BBC archives reveal executives’ concerns that securing Sachs held back the scripts, which Cleese wrote with his then wife Connie Booth, who later played chambermaid Polly in the series.
Two weeks later, Davies offered the same role to Rising Damp star Leonard Rossiter, warning him that Cleese is “playing Basil at high speed.”
Cleese paid tribute to Sachs – while putting aside political correctness. He said: ‘The key to Manuel’s role was that he always went out of his way to help, and it was only the language barrier that confused things.
“Unfortunately, people with literal minds can only see one interpretation, and never an interpretation with any humor in it.”