'Gabby' Hayes (1885 - 1969)

'Gabby' Hayes

George 'Gabby' Hayes was a famous character actor in movies during the 1930's and 1940's and later on television. He made his name in Western movies playing the sidekick to stars like Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. He became extremely popular and featured consistently in lists of the ten favorite actors in polls taken of movie-goers of the period.

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He was born George Francis Hayes on May 7, 1885 in Wellsville, New York, the third of seven children. In his youth he worked as a circus performer and semi-professional baseball player before moving to perform in vaudeville and burlesque with his wife, Olive Ireland whom he married in 1914. The pair became extremely successful on the vaudeville circuit and he was able to retire in his forties, but he then lost a lot of his money in the stock market crash of 1929 and was forced back to work. He moved to California at the suggestion of his wife and began to get regular work in the movie industry.

When he became a regular fixture in the series Westerns of the 1930's, it was at first as a bad guy, in films such as 'Riders of Destiny' in 1933 and 'West of the Divide' in 1934, often starring opposite the young John Wayne. From 1936 he appeared regularly as Hopalong Cassidy's sidekick Windy Halliday; 'Trail Dust' in 1936 is a typical example. By then he was already past fifty, and the whiskery, garrulous, old-timer role suited him well.

At the end of the 1930's he left the Cassidy team after a financial dispute and began appearing regularly with Roy Rogers - with the new name of 'Gabby' as he was not allowed to use the old name 'Windy'. He appears in 'The Arizona Kid' in 1939, 'Young Bill Hickock' in 1940, and dozens of others. He occasionally made an appearance with Gene Autry, such as 'Melody Ranch' in 1940, and with other Western stars such as John Wayne.

Towards the end of his career he played, as always, the grizzled old-timer in some Randolph Scott vehicles, including 'Trail Street' in 1947 and, his swan song, 'The Cariboo Trail' in 1950. From then until 1954 he had his own TV Western series, 'The Gabby Hayes Show', aimed largely at children, after which he hung up his spurs.

Offscreen he was a serious, well-dressed, and sophisticated man - the polar opposite of his film persona, whose preferred utterances were 'yer durn tootin' and 'young whipper snapper.' He remained married to Olive until her death in 1956. Despite his prolific screen appearances as a cowboy, Hayes didn't learn to ride a horse until he was past the age of forty. He even professed that he had never been a big fan of the Western genre.

Gabby Hayes died of cardiovascular disease in Burbank, California, on February 9, 1969 aged 83. He was buried at the Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles.