“I really don’t like Westerns.

“I really don’t like Westerns.

“I really don’t like Westerns. They all feel the same to me. The stories are so few—you’ve got the stagecoach robbery, the cattle thieves, the bank taking away the farm, the old mine, and the retired gunfighter.”
George Hayes was the son of a hotel owner and oil manager. As a young man, he worked in a circus and played semi-pro baseball. At 17, he left home in 1902 to join a traveling theater group. In 1914, he married Olive Ireland, and together they became popular in vaudeville shows. He retired in his 40s, but after losing most of his money in the 1929 stock market crash, he had to go back to work. He had appeared in one movie before the crash, but it wasn’t until his wife urged him to move to California and he met producer Trem Carr that his film career truly took off.
Hayes played many roles in both Westerns and other genres, but by the mid-1930s, he focused mainly on Westerns. He became famous as Windy Halliday, the sidekick to Hopalong Cassidy, in movies from 1936 to 1939. After leaving that role over a pay dispute, he started using the nickname “Gabby” in his roles. He was one of the few sidekicks to make the Top Ten Western Box Office Stars list, doing so several times. Early on, he played both funny sidekick characters and clean-shaven villains, but by the late 1930s, he mainly played a Western sidekick to stars like John Wayne, Roy Rogers, and Randolph Scott.
In 1950, after his last film, Hayes hosted “The Gabby Hayes Show,” a TV show for children about the Old West. In real life, he was nothing like his characters. He was well-read, neatly dressed, serious, and thoughtful.
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Credit: American Philosophy