George ‘Gabby’ Hayes

Celebrities, Celebrity Q&A, People
on December 10, 2009

George "Gabby" Hayes was always my favorite sidekick in the Westerns I watched as a child, yet I have never read anything about his private life.
Jim Bowerstock, Van Wert, Ohio

Hayes, born in Wellsville, N.Y., was probably the most famous sidekick in the Western movies of the 1930s and ’40s. In real life, he was the opposite of the grizzled old codger that he usually portrayed alongside Hopalong Cassidy, Wild Bill Elliott, Randolph Scott, John Wayne and Roy Rogers, with whom he rode in more than 40 cowboy dramas. He and his wife had no children. Hayes died of cardiovascular disease in 1969 in Burbank, Calif., at the age of 83.