For several decades, George "Gabby" Hayes was the personification of the word "sidekick." The quintessential grizzled, sputtering old codger rode through an endless succession of westerns alongside every cowboy hero from Roy Rogers to Hopalong Cassidy to John Wayne, playing characters with names like Windy, Spike and Shanghai, and popularizing such signature phrases as "young whippersnapper" and "yer darn tootin'" - which spread as far as to my neighborhood in the Bronx.

George Francis Hayes was born not on the plains of Texas but in the Allegany County town of Wellsville, N.Y. (He actually didn't learn to ride a horse until he was almost 50.) The third of seven children of a hotelier who was also involved in the oil business, George played semipro baseball while still in high school, then ran away from home at 17, attracted by the lure of show business. He had a varied pre-film career, working in a circus, joining a touring stock company, and, with his former Ziegfeld girl wife Olive, successfully playing the burlesque and vaudeville circuits.

After appearing in one silent film, his big break came in talkies, playing a character named Uncle Ben in the 1935 "Hop-A-Long Cassidy," which led to his becoming Hoppy's official sidekick, Windy Halliday.

He teamed up with Roy Rogers in 1939 for the film "Southward Ho!" in which the character Gabby Whitaker was born, and the pair would go on to make 40 more films together.

Hayes achieved great popularity for a sidekick, one of the few to land repeatedly on the annual list of Top Ten Western Box Office Stars. He was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 2000, 31 years after his death. He has, not one, but two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

After his last film in 1950, Gabby got his own TV show, which ran for four years on NBC, featuring clips from his many early westerns. It filled the 15-minute time slot immediately preceding the enormously popular "Howdy Doody" show. When it moved to NBC in 1956, it was expanded to 30 minutes, telling tales of the American West, running now on Saturday mornings. These shows inspired a surprising amount of merchandise, such as a 1954 "Gabby Hayes Coloring Book" with cartoonish illustrations, published by Abbott Publishing Co. and a more elaborate "Tall Tales/Magic Dial Funny Coloring Book" with a cover featuring a die-cut opening in the shape of a TV set and a disk wheel, which, when turned, produced black-and-white pictures of Gabby.

There was also a gimmicky 1954 "Gabby Hayes Tall Tales for Little Folks" book designed so that when each page of the stiff cardboard book was turned, he appeared in a different outfit - from Santa Claus to a spaceman. A "Gabby Hayes Shooting Target" set consisting of a cardboard target, a plastic dart pistol and two darts is now very collectible, as is a wooden rocking horse based on Hayes' horse Cottontail, and a fishing outfit consisting of a tin carrying case, a rod and reel, plus, bobber, weights and hooks. Sponsor Quaker Puffed Wheat cereal offered a Gabby Hayes Western Gun Collection - six miniature metal guns finished in gold - as a premium in the early 1950s, and there were also puzzles, hand puppets, books, records and other memorabilia. The '50s also saw the appearance of the comic book "Gabby Hayes Comics."

Perhaps the most surprising thing about George "Gabby" Hayes is that in real life he was a well-read, well-dressed connoisseur, elegant and articulate, with a neatly trimmed beard - and a full set of teeth.

© Copley News Service

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