The little-known Jewish link to Fawlty Towers

JORDAN MOSHE

The legendary British television sitcom Fawlty Towers needs little introduction. Broadcast on the BBC in 1975 and 1979, the show was conceived and written by acclaimed British comedy actor John Cleese and Connie Booth. They both starred in the show, and were married at the time of the first series.

Although it ran for just 12 episodes across two seasons, the hit show was still ranked first by the British Film Institute on a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes.

The show’s legacy lives on, including in South Africa, where the Auto & General Theatre on the Square recently staged a production based on Cleese’s original series, bringing the personalities of Basil and Sybil Fawlty to the Johannesburg stage.

Annie Robinson and Mark Mulder played the roles of the quarrelsome couple with aplomb, re-enacting the classic scenes familiar to all. Even the Jewish Women’s Benevolent Society got in on the nostalgia, booking out an entire performance as a community fundraiser.

In addition to the show’s producer, Daphne Kuhn, being Jewish, another tie connects the timeless comedy classic to the Jewish people. Manuel, the ill-treated yet determined waiter of Spanish origin, the show’s most memorable comedic personality, was played by German-born Andrew Sachs who escaped the tyranny of 1930s Europe.

According to a report by the Association of Jewish Refugees, Andreas Siegfried Sachs was born in Berlin in 1930. His father, Hans, was a Jewish insurance broker, while his mother, Katharina, was a Catholic. Although not strictly born Jewish, it seems that Sachs’ identity was strongly defined by his Judaism from the start.

“My father didn’t talk much about Hitler,” Sachs told The Guardian in 2014, “but all my friends were Aryan and our teacher was fond of Hitler, and would tell us to do what Hitler said. I had one friend who came up to me one day – and he was a bit stumbling – and said, ‘I’m not allowed to play with you because my parents said that your father is Jewish.’ That was the moment I realised something was wrong.”

Sachs’ father was arrested for being Jewish, but his mother’s family’s good relations with the police earned him a temporary reprieve. The family later fled to London in 1938 to escape persecution and what would eventually unfold into the Holocaust.

They were among the tens of thousands of people who fled Nazi-occupied Europe who were supported by World Jewish Relief’s predecessor organisation, the Central British Fund for German Jewry.

In an interview with the Jewish Chronicle in 2007, Sachs said, “Half of me is Jewish. Sometimes I think it might be the better half.”

In the 1950s, Sachs worked on radio productions, and began his acting career on the West End. He rose to prominence and in the 1970s, secured his legacy when he was cast as hapless waiter Manuel and became a household name. Sachs married Melody Lang, who actually appeared in an episode of Fawlty Towers.

After a prolific acting career, he was tragically diagnosed with vascular dementia in 2012, a condition which eventually left him unable to speak and forced him to use a wheelchair. Sachs passed away in November 2016 at the age of 86.

The lasting legacy of the proudly half-Jewish actor is certainly apparent. In the wake of his passing, the BBC stated that Sachs’ performance on Fawlty Towers was one of the most widely imitated from that era.

Among the tributes paid to Sachs, Rafi Cooper, the World Jewish Relief’s director of communications, said of the acclaimed actor, “Andrew Sachs was loved and admired. Like so many who fled Nazi Germany and settled in the United Kingdom, he made a significant contribution to British society. He certainly qualifies as a national treasure.”

So though they may appear removed from yiddishkeit, it would seem that there is a distinctly Jewish streak in the Fawltys and their lasting success.