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George Francis

Personal Profile

George Francis
  • Date of Birth:
    May 7, 1885
  • Zodiac Sign:
    Taurus
  • Place of Birth:
    Wellsville, New York, U.S.A
  • Place of Death:
    Burbank, California, U.S.A
  • Date of Death:
    February 9, 1969
  • Sex:
    Male
  • Nationality:
    American

Family

George Francis
  • Spouse:
    Olive E. Ireland (March 4, 1914 – July 5, 1957)

Career

George Francis

Trivia

George Francis
  • In 2000, he was posthumously inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
  • For his contribution to radio, Gabby Hayes has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6427 Hollywood Blvd. and a second star at 1724 Vine Street for his contribution to the television industry.
  • He lent his name to a comic book series and to a children's summer camp in New York.
  • Half way through the show he would say something else and at the end too but he did not appear as an active character in the stories themselves.
  • He introduced the show, often while whittling on a piece of wood and would sometimes throw in some tall stories.
  • He moved to television and hosted The Gabby Hayes Show, a western series, from 1950 to 1954 on NBC, and a new version in 1956 on ABC.
  • The western film genre declined in the late 1940s and Hayes made his last film appearance in The Cariboo Trail (1950).
  • He appeared in either or both the Motion Picture Herald and Boxoffice Magazine lists of Top Ten Money-Making Western Stars for twelve straight years and a thirteenth time in 1954, four years after his last movie.
  • Hayes became a popular performer and consistently appeared among the ten favorite actors in polls taken of movie-goers of the period.
  • In fact, Wayne and Hayes made numerous films together in the very early 1930s with Hayes playing "straight" pre-sidekick roles, and sometimes even the villain.

Biography

George Francis
Last Updated: Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Hayes was born the third of seven children in Wellsville, New York, and did not come from a cowboy background. In fact, he did not know how to ride a horse until he was in his forties and had to learn for movie roles. His father, Clark Hayes, operated a hotel and was also involved in oil production.

George Hayes played semi-professional baseball while in high school, then ran away from home in 1902, at 17. He joined a stock company, apparently traveled for a time with a circus, and became a successful vaudevillian. He had become so successful that by 1928 he was able, at 43, to retire to a home on Long Island in Baldwin, New York. He lost all his savings the next year in the 1929 stock-market crash and returned to acting.

Hayes married Olive E. Ireland, daughter of a New Jersey glass finisher, on March 4, 1914. She joined him in vaudeville, performing under the name Dorothy Earle (not to be confused with film actress/writer Dorothy Earle). She convinced him in 1929 to try his luck in motion pictures, and the couple moved to Los Angeles. They remained together until her death July 5, 1957. The couple had no children

 

Filmography

George Francis

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