George 'Gabby' Hayes | WatchedThis
George 'Gabby' Hayes
Acting
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.
Filmography Movies
Acting
My Pal Trigger
Gabby doesn't want to breed his horse the Golden Sovereign with Roy's. When Sovereign and Roy's horse escape, the Sovereign gets shot accidentally by Skoville but Roy is blamed and jailed. A year later Roy returns with Trigger, the son of the Sovereign. When Skoville reveals he was present when the horse was shot, Roy sees an opportunity to clear his name.
Riders of Destiny
James Kincaid controls the local water supply and plans to do away with the other ranchers. Government agent Sandy Saunders arrives undercover to investigate Kincaid's land swindle scheme, and win the heart of one of his victims, Fay Denton.
Randy Rides Alone
Bandits lead by Matt the Mute enter a bar and kill multiple people. Randy Bowers comes to town and is framed by Matt the Mute, who is working with the sheriff (who doesn't know Matt is really a criminal). Randy escapes with the help of the niece of the dead owner of the bar. Bowers ends up running from the sheriff, and ends up in the cave in which the bandits have their hide-out…
Texas Terror
Sheriff John Higgins quits and goes into prospecting after he thinks he has killed his best friend in shooting it out with robbers. He encounters his dead buddy's sister and helps her run her ranch. Then she finds out about his past.
The Lucky Texan
Jerry Mason, a young Texan, and Jake Benson, an old rancher, become partners and strike it rich with a gold mine. They then find their lives complicated by bad guys and a woman.
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
Longfellow Deeds lives in a small town, leading a small town kind of life. When a relative dies and leaves Deeds a fortune, Longfellow moves to the big city where he becomes an instant target for everyone. Deeds outwits them all until Babe Bennett comes along. When small-town boy meets big-city girl anything can, and does, happen.
West of the Divide
Ted Hayden impersonates a wanted man and joins Gentry's gang only to learn later that Gentry was the one who killed his father.
Dark Command
When transplanted Texan Bob Seton arrives in Lawrence, Kansas he finds much to like about the place, especially Mary McCloud, daughter of the local banker. Politics is in the air however. It's just prior to the civil war and there is already a sharp division in the Territory as to whether it will remain slave-free. When he gets the opportunity to run for marshal, Seton finds himself running against the respected local schoolteacher, William Cantrell. Not is what it seems however. While acting as the upstanding citizen in public, Cantrell is dangerously ambitious and is prepared to do anything to make his mark, and his fortune, on the Territory. When he loses the race for marshal, he forms a group of raiders who run guns into the territory and rob and terrorize settlers throughout the territory. Eventually donning Confederate uniforms, it is left to Seton and the good citizens of Lawrence to face Cantrell and his raiders in one final clash.
In Old Oklahoma
Cowboy Dan Somers and oilman Jim "Hunk" Gardner compete for oil lease rights on Indian land in Oklahoma, as well as for the favors of schoolteacher Cathy Allen.
Albuquerque
Cole Armin comes to Albuquerque to work for his uncle, John Armin, a despotic and hard-hearted czar who operates an ore-hauling freight line, and whose goal is to eliminate a competing line run by Ted Wallace and his sister Celia. Cole tires of his uncle's heavy-handed tactics and switches over to the Wallace side. Lety Tyler, an agent hired by the uncle, also switches over by warning Cole and Ted of a trap set for them by the uncle and his henchman.
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