George 'Gabby' Hayes

George 'Gabby' Hayes

1885-05-06

Biography

George Hayes is an American character actor, the most famous of Western-movie sidekicks of the 1930s and 1940s. He worked in a circus and played semi-pro baseball while a teenager. In 1914, he married Olive Ireland and the pair became successful on the vaudeville circuit. Retired in his forties, he lost much of his money in the 1929 stock market crash and was forced to return to work. He played scores of roles in Westerns and non-Westerns alike, finally in the mid-1930s settling in to an almost exclusively Western career. He gained fame as Hopalong Cassidy's sidekick Windy Halliday in films between 1936 and 1939. Leaving the Cassidy films in a salary dispute, he was legally precluded from using the Windy nickname, and so took on the sobriquet Gabby, and was so billed from about 1940. In his early films, he alternated between whiskered comic-relief sidekicks and clean-shaven bad guys, but by the later 1930s, he worked almost exclusively as a Western sidekick to stars such as John Wayne, Roy Rogers, and Randolph Scott. After his last film in 1950, he starred as the host of The Gabby Hayes Show. He died on February 9, 1969.

Also appears in

Return of the Bad Men

Return of the Bad Men

6.3

Jesse James at Bay

Jesse James at Bay

5.0

Tall in the Saddle

Tall in the Saddle

6.5

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town

7.5

Love Me Tonight

Love Me Tonight

6.6

Let Freedom Ring

Let Freedom Ring

6.0

Dark Command

Dark Command

6.3

City Limits

City Limits

4.0

Saga of Death Valley

Saga of Death Valley

6.2

The Star Packer

The Star Packer

4.3

The Man from Hell’s Edges

The Man from Hell’s Edges

4.0

The Stolen Jools

The Stolen Jools

5.6

Trail Dust

Trail Dust

4.0

In Old Oklahoma

In Old Oklahoma

6.3

Riders of Destiny

Riders of Destiny

5.2

Beggars in Ermine

Beggars in Ermine

6.3

The Cariboo Trail

The Cariboo Trail

6.3

Texas Terror

Texas Terror

4.7

Sunset Trail

Sunset Trail

Not yet rated

The Lucky Texan

The Lucky Texan

4.7