A gentleman and a cowboy
QUESTION Was George ‘Gabby’ Hayes the most prolific screen cowboy?
GEORGE ‘Gabby’ Hayes (18851969) was a Western character actor who thrived in Hollywood in the B-movie explosion of the Thirties, Forties and Fifties.
Hayes, a New Yorker, was typecast as a bearded and grumpy, yet loyal and courageous, comic relief foil to the film’s cowboy star.
His most famous role was as Hopalong Cassidy’s sidekick Windy Halliday from 1936 to 1939. After quitting following a salary dispute, he was barred from using the name ‘Windy’ so his character took the nickname ‘Gabby’.
He was the sidekick to top stars of the day, including Roy Rogers in 44 films, John Wayne in 15, Wild Bill Elliott in 14, Gene Autry in seven and Randolph Scott in six. In all, he starred in 145 Westerns, making him the most prolific screen cowboy.
His offstage persona was totally different from his screen one. He was a well-dressed connoisseur of food, wine and theatre and a knowledgeable investor.
Ironically, he claimed to dislike Westerns.
He died in 1969 of cardiovascular disease in Burbank, California, aged 83.
A number of Western actors have starred in around 100 films, including John McIntire, Walter Brennan, Harry Carey and Andy Devine. Leading men Roy Rogers and Randolph Scott each headlined more than 80 Westerns.
Running Hayes a close second, however, was Charles Starrett (1903-1986). A former college football player from Massachusetts, he starred in 134 Westerns and made his name as The Durango Kid, a frontier Robin Hood, playing the lead in 64 films between 1940 and 1952.
Another rival to the cowboy crown was Robert J Wilke (19141989). Before making his big break in Hollywood, Cincinnati-born was a high diver at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair.
Wilke started out as a stuntman in the Thirties and enjoyed a career as a bad guy in 122 Westerns, including High Noon and The Magnificent Seven.
He also appeared in more than 20 Western TV shows, including Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, Laramie and The Texan.
Wilke was said to be the best golfer in Hollywood – it was claimed he earned more money on the golf course than he ever did from acting.
Geordie Allen, Birmingham.
QUESTION How many Irish acts have hit No.1 in the US charts? TWO Irish singers – Gilbert O’Sullivan, Sinéad O’Connor, as she was then called – and one Irish act, U2, have hit the top spot in the US charts over the years. First one up was Gilbert O’Sullivan way back in 1972. A song that he both wrote and performed, Alone Again (Naturally), was released at the same time as, but wasn’t on, his album, Back To Front. It went to the top spot in the American charts on July 29, 1972, and stayed in the charts at No.1 for six weeks, though not six consecutive weeks.
The second solo Irish artist to top the American charts was Sinéad O’Connor, in 1990, with Nothing Compares 2 U.
The lyrics of the song, and its music, were composed by Prince, but Sinéad O’Connor’s version was released as the second single from her second studio album, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got. It zoomed to the top of the US charts on April 21, 1990.
Sinéad O’Connor had a number of hits in the years that followed. Last year she converted to Islam having changed her name the previous year to Shuhada’ Davitt.
The first time U2 hit the top of the US charts was in 1987, when With Or Without You spent three weeks there, starting on May 16, 1987. This was the third track on U2’s fifth studio album, The Joshua Tree; the track was released as the album’s lead single on March 16, 1987. Both the album and the single did remarkably well and in The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, the single was ranked No.132.
Also in 1987, another U2 single, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, which was released in August 1987, also hit the No.1 spot in the US. It was the second track from The Joshua Tree album and was released as the album’s second single. It got two nominations at the 30th annual Grammy Awards in 1988 and it reached 93rd spot in The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
Altogether, U2 have outperformed other Irish artists in the US charts. The group also got 12 No.1 hits on Billboard’s adult alternatives chart, as well as eight No.1 hits on Billboard’s alternative songs chart and seven No.1 hits on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Songs chart.
U2 have done spectacularly well in the US charts, but long before them came Gilbert O’Sullivan. And just three years after their two big hits in 1987, Sinéad O’Connor blazed to the top.
Rachel Hannon, by email.
QUESTION After coming across the word betrump, meaning deceive or cheat, I intend to use it. What other lost words deserve a comeback? FURTHER to earlier answers about favourite lost words, Dr Johnson was one of Britain’s great characters. He is described by The Oxford Dictionary Of National Biography as ‘arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history’.
His authoritative work, A Dictionary Of The English language has a host of lost gems. Examples include:
Nidorosity – an ‘eructation with the taste of undigested meat’. In other words, a meaty burp.
Daggled-tail – ‘bemired; dipped in the water or mud; bespattered’, as in: ‘The gentlemen of wit and pleasure are apt to be choaked at the sight of so many daggletail parsons that happen to fall in their way.’ (Jonathan Swift).
Princox – ‘a conceited person, a pert young rogue’.
Nightwarbling – ‘singing in the night’.
Gynocracy – a governing body of women, which Johnson defined as ‘petticoat government’.
He would sometimes add entertaining definitions to familiar words, for instance, excise: ‘a hateful tax levied upon commodities and adjudged not by the common judges of property but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid’.
And taking aim at himself, lexicographer: ‘a harmless drudge’ who ‘busies himself in tracing the original and detailing the signification of words’.
Marcus Gower, by email.
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