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George 'Gabby' Hayes

George 'Gabby' Hayes

Birthday: 1885-05-06 | Place of Birth: Wellsville, New York, United States

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.

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Known For

Acting

Year
Title

Role

1950
The Cariboo Trail

as    Grizzly

1950
The Gabby Hayes Show

as    Himself

1949
El Paso

as    Pesky Tees

1948
Return of the Bad Men

as    John Pettit

1948
Albuquerque

as    Juke

1947
Trail Street

as    Billy Jones

1946
My Pal Trigger

as    Gabby Kendrick

1946
Roll on Texas Moon

as    Gabby Whittaker

1946
Home in Oklahoma

as    Gabby Whittaker

1946
Song of Arizona

as    Gabby Whittaker

1946
Under Nevada Skies

as    Gabby Whittaker

1946
Heldorado

as    Gabby Whittaker

1946
Badman's Territory

as    Honest Jim Badger / The Coyote Kid

1946
Rainbow Over Texas

as    Sheriff 'Gabby' Whittaker

1945
Sunset in El Dorado

as    Gabby

1945
Bells of Rosarita

as    Gabby Whittake

1945
Man from Oklahoma

as    Gabby Whittaker

1945
Don't Fence Me In

as    Gabby Whittaker

1945
Utah

as    Gabby Whittaker

1945
Along the Navajo Trail

as    Gabby Whittaker

1944
Tucson Raiders

as    'Gabby' Hopkins

1944
Tall in the Saddle

as    Dave

1944
Marshal of Reno

as    Gabby

1944
Hidden Valley Outlaws

as    Gabby Hayes

1944
Lights of Old Santa Fe

as    Gabby Whittaker

1944
The Big Bonanza

as    Hap Selby

1943
In Old Oklahoma

as    Despirit Dean

1943
Death Valley Manhunt

as    Gabby Hayes

1943
Bordertown Gun Fighters

as    Gabby Hayes

1943
Calling Wild Bill Elliott

as    Gabby Hayes