Gabby Hayes Show | George ‘Gabby’ Hayes | Season 1, Episode 17 | Alarm Clock

Gabby tells a Tall Tale about an Alarm Clock, then shows action scenes from a Bob Steele western.

The Gabby Hayes Show is a Western television series in which the western film star and sidekick for John Wayne, Hopalong Cassidy and Roy Rogers — George “Gabby” Hayes (1885–1969) — narrated each episode, showed clips from old westerns, and told TALL TALES. The first Hayes program ran on NBC at 5:15 p.m. Eastern for fifteen minutes three times per week and preceded the puppet series, Howdy Doody. It aired from December 11, 1950, to January 1, 1954. The second version was a half-hour broadcast on Saturday mornings, carried for only thirteen weeks from May 12 to July 14, 1956, on ABC.

The titles such as Telescope, Swan Dive and Mosquito refer to one of the “Tall Tales” that Gabby tells at the start or tail of each episode.

The show was sponsored by Quaker Oats’ puffed cereals, which were “shot from guns”. As was common at the time, the host delivered the commercial. This often included Hayes firing a small cannon loaded with the cereal at the camera, while warning the viewers to “Watch out for your televisionary sets!”

Directed by Vincent J. Donehue
Written by Jerome Coopersmith, Horton Foote
Starring: Wright King, George ‘Gabby’ Hayes, Andrew Duggan

Cast
George ‘Gabby’ Hayes as Self – Host
Wright King as Danny
Andrew Duggan as Major Jones
Truman Smith as Pops, the waiter
Elliott Cellaban as Barnes
John Randolph as Sam Bass