ONE OF A KIND:  GABBY HAYES
By Leonard Maltin

When I want to smile, I look at a picture of Gabby Hayes.  It brings back a flood of memories, distant recollections of watching him on television when I was very young.  The specifics may be hazy, but his face and personality are vivid in my mind, and it's hard to forget such signature catchphrases as “young whippersnapper” and “yer darn tootin'.”

Gabby Hayes' name is virtually synonymous with the word sidekick, but in the early 1950s he finally took his turn in the spotlight, hosting his own TV program.  Here, he introduced vintage cowboy clips and sold Quaker Puffed Wheat and Quaker Puffed Rice to an entire generation of impressionable fans.  In that booming era of cowboy merchandise, Gabby had his own hand-puppet, plus storybooks, records, and even a comic book that bore his name.  (Typically, I saved nothing from that period, and I've spent a fair amount of money in recent years buying back my childhood by acquiring prime examples of Gabby goods.  My prize:  a Gabby Hayes fishing outfit, in its original, beautifully illustrated metal cylinder.)

But the nicest part of revisiting Gabby Hayes has been talking to people who knew him, and learning how well-loved he was in real life, as husband, colleague, friend, and mentor.

Dale Evans never forgot her first sighting of the unmistakable actor, because she was new to Hollywood and didn't know who he was at first.  “My first day at Republic Pictures, I was just standing there looking at cars coming in and here comes this shiny, beautiful Lincoln convertible, and here sat this old man with this beard, and that terrible hat that had bullet holes in it.  He sat straight as an arrow, and I said to myself, ‘I have seen Hollywood.' ”

Dale was soon to learn who Gabby was, and like many another novice, was grateful for his tutelage.  “He knew camera angles, and if anybody was trying to upstage me, he'd tell me, ‘Don't let ‘em do it, don't let 'em do it.'  He was really good (to me).”

George Hayes had been acting on stage for most of his life.  Born in 1885, he was just a teenager when he set out on the road with a traveling show.  In 1914 he wed a Ziegfeld girl named Olive Ireland, and they remained together until her death in 1956. 

If you want to see what George Hayes looked and sounded like before he disappeared into the guise of Gabby, seek out some of John Wayne's early Lone Star westerns of the mid-1930s, like West of the Divide and Blue Steel.  These ultra-low-budget films drew on a small but hearty stock company of performers, including a young actor/stuntman named

Gabby and his wife are out on the town at the Harwyn Club in this rare, early 1950s photo.

Yakima Canutt, and Hayes played a variety of roles, both clean-shaven and with stubble, including the villain (!) in The Star Packer.  But even in these early films one can see the formative version of the cantankerous old-timer that soon became his trademark role. 

The turning point of his career came in 1935, when he was cast in a supporting role with William Boyd in Hop-a-Long Cassidy.  His amiably grizzled—but not yet bearded—character made a real impact, not only on audiences but on producer Harry “Pop” Sherman and leading man Boyd.  In the second film, he turned up as a garrulous sourdough.  Before long, he was Hoppy's official sidekick, Windy, guaranteed to add comedy relief to the outdoor action whenever called upon—and even a poignant moment from time to time. 

A dispute with Harry Sherman in 1940 ended a happy association on screen, but Boyd's widow Grace says, “He was the closest to Bill's heart because he was the first one; he and Gabby were close personal friends, too.”   

Theirs was more than an on-screen friendship. “He was a very intelligent man, much more sophisticated than you would think. He knew his wines. He drank one glass of wine with dinner every night, and that was all he drank.  And he was a wonderful storyteller.  All he had to do was take out his teeth—and he was Gabby.”

Hoppy's loss was Republic Pictures' gain, however.  He moved to the busy B-movie factory and became everybody's favorite sidekick.  He even had one outing with Gene Autry, in the 1940 musical “special,” Melody Ranch, as Pop Laramie, Gene's home-town booster.  He worked with everyone from Bill Elliott to Randolph Scott (at RKO), but his most memorable association was with Roy Rogers.  One of Roy's best musical westerns, Don't Fence Me In, was even built around Gabby's character.

Not surprisingly, Gabby made a lasting impression on Roy and Dale's children.  Their eldest daughter, Cheryl, thought of him as a surrogate uncle. “He and his wife had always wanted children and were unable to have them,” she recalls.  As a result, “He let me sit on his lap and comb his beard.

“He arrived in his English-cut Scots tweeds and silk shirts that were made just for him, and smoked a pipe; he was the most debonair, gorgeous older gentleman, just impeccable.

“He called his wife Mama.  Mom said he lived and died by the reviews that Mama gave him.  Her opinion was the one that mattered.  He talked about her all the time. 

“Dad practically hero-worshiped Gabby.  There was not anything about the stage or motion pictures that the man didn't know.  He knew lighting, he knew makeup, he knew camera

A clean-shaven George Hayes with John Wayne and Yakima Canutt in Randy Rides Alone (1934)

angles, and he sort of mentored dad.  Dad always said he was sort of the older brother or a coach that he'd never had as far as acting was concerned. 

Dale Evans told me, “He was warm.  Gabby had a beautiful speaking voice, nothing like you saw in the pictures.  Very cultured, very well modulated, and a terrific command of the English language.  Gabby was so kind.  I remember he came out to our house, when we lived in Chatsworth, and had dinner and the children all bowed their heads for prayer before dinner, and Gabby said to Roy, ‘Do you realize how blessed you are with this family?' ” 

Grace Boyd recalls, “After his wife died, he had a housekeeper for many years; she used to take good care of him.  And he decided one time he wasn't going to be working for a bit, so he shaved, and wound up clean shaven.  And the housekeeper wouldn't let him out of the house!  He had to stay in until he grew it back.  So he was never seen without the beard, once he got it.”

By all accounts, George Hayes never resented his total immersion in the role of Gabby.  Today, young actors chafe at being tied to a TV sitcom after the first few seasons, but Hayes had spent too many years as a barnstorming thespian, traveling from town to town, to be ungrateful for steady work and a healthy paycheck. 

Says Grace, “He was a good man.  There are a lot of actors around, they're not much inside, but he was a sweetheart.”

Imagine how reassuring it's been to revisit Gabby in recent years (most often on Encore's Westerns channel) and find that he's just as funny and endearing as I remember him to be.  Yer darn tootin!
 

 
This article  first appeared in
Cowboys & Indians magazine and is reprinted here with their kind permission. It is copyright 2002 Cowboys & Indians.  If you love westerns, and the western lifestyle, I highly recommend you check out this handsome publication.