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(May 7, 1885 – February 9, 1969)
 George
Francis 'Gabby' Hayes was born the third of seven children in
Wellsville, New York, and did not come from a cowboy background. In
fact, he did not know how to ride a horse until he was in his
forties and had to learn for movie roles. His father, Clark Hayes,
operated a hotel and was also involved in oil production. George
Hayes played semi-professional baseball while in high school, then
ran away from home in 1902, at 17. He joined a stock company,
apparently traveled for a time with a circus, and became a
successful vaudevillian. He had become so successful that by 1928 he
was able, at 43, to retire to a home on Long Island in Baldwin, New
York. He lost all his savings the next year in the 1929 stock-market
crash and returned to acting.
On his move to Los Angeles, according to later interviews, Hayes had
a chance meeting with producer Trem Carr, who liked his look and
gave him thirty roles over the next six years. In his early career,
Hayes was cast in a variety of roles, including villains, and
occasionally played two roles in a single film. He found a niche in
the growing genre of western films, many of which were series with
recurring characters. Ironically, Hayes would admit he had never
been a big fan of westerns.
Hayes, in real life an intelligent, well groomed, and articulate
man, was cast as a grizzled codger who uttered phrases like "consarn
it", "yer durn tootin", "durn persnickety female", and "young
whippersnapper".
Hayes played the part of Windy Halliday, the sidekick to Hopalong
Cassidy (William Boyd), from 1935 to 1939. In 1939, Hayes left
Paramount Pictures in a dispute over his salary and moved to
Republic Pictures. Paramount held the rights to the name Windy
Halliday, so a new nickname was created for Hayes' character; Gabby.
As Gabby Whitaker, Hayes appeared in more than 40 pictures between
1939 and 1946, usually with Roy Rogers but also with Gene Autry or
Bill Elliot, often working under the directorship of Joseph Kane.
Hayes was also repeatedly cast as a sidekick to western icons
Randolph Scott and John Wayne. In fact, Wayne and Hayes made
numerous films together in the very early 1930s with Hayes playing
"straight" pre-sidekick roles, and sometimes even the villain. Hayes
became a popular performer and consistently appeared among the ten
favorite actors in polls taken of movie-goers of the period. He
appeared in either or both the Motion Picture Herald and Boxoffice
Magazine lists of Top Ten Money-Making Western Stars for twelve
straight years and a thirteenth time in 1954, four years after his
last movie.
The western film genre declined in the late 1940s and Hayes made his
last film appearance in The Cariboo Trail (1950). He moved to
television and hosted The Gabby Hayes Show, a western series, from
1950 to 1954, and a new version in 1956. He introduced the show,
often while whittling on a piece of wood and would sometimes throw
in some tall stories. Half way through the show he would say
something else and at the end too but he did not appear as an active
character in the stories themselves. When the series ended he
retired from show business. He lent his name to a comic book series
and to a children's summer camp in New York. Following his wife's
death in 1957, he lived in and managed a ten-unit apartment building
he owned in North Hollywood, California. |
