George 'Gabby' Hayes
Known For
Acting
Born
1885-05-06 in Wellsville, New York, USA
Died
1969-02-09
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.
Most Known For
What's My Line?
as Self
The Dinah Shore Chevy Show
as Self
Dirigible
as Parade Official (uncredited)
$1,000 a Minute
as New Deal Watson
Rainbow Valley
as George Hale
Western von gestern
as Gabby Whittaker (archive footage)
Heldorado
as Gabby Whittaker
Ladies Crave Excitement
as McCloskey
Play Girl
as Dance Hall Tobacconist (uncredited)
Rodeo Rocketeers
as Marshall George
Claim Jumpers
as Jake Benson
The Night Rider
as Altoonie
Big Business Girl
as Hotel Clerk (uncredited)
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
as Farmer's Spokesman (uncredited)
Tall in the Saddle
as Dave
The Stolen Jools
as Projectionist
Dark Command
as Andrew 'Doc' Grunch
Trail Street
as Billy Jones
The Plainsman
as Breezy
The Texas Rangers
as Judge Snow