Greatest Western sidekick?
by yrnej | created - 24 Jul 2014 | updated - 28 Jul 2014 | PublicThese (often old) pardners were relied on in hundreds of Western movies and TV shows to back up the star and provide humor between shoot-outs. Which of these actors who often played sidekicks did you most enjoy watching?
Discuss the list here
1. Walter Brennan
Actor | The Westerner
In many ways the most successful and familiar character actor of American sound films and the only actor to date to win three Oscars for Best Supporting Actor, Walter Brennan attended college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, studying engineering. While in school he became interested in acting and ...
often appeared in Gary Cooper's westerns and played Grandpa on "The Real McCoys" for over 220 episodes
2. Smiley Burnette
Actor | Galloping Thunder
Smiley worked on a local radio station and in Vaudeville after high school. Always interested in music, he was friends with Gene Autry and worked with him on the radio show "The National Barn Dance". When Westerns became a big draw with sound, the studios were always on the lookout for singing ...
played Gene Autry's sidekick in over 80 films
3. Pat Buttram
Actor | Robin Hood
The son of a circuit-riding Methodist preacher in rural Alabama, Pat Buttram became one of America's best-known comic entertainers. He left Alabama a month before his 18th birthday to attend the 1933 Chicago World's Fair. An announcer from radio station WLS was on hand to interview members of the ...
replaced Smiley Burnette as Gene Autry's sidekick, played Mr. Haney on over 140 episodes of "Green Acres"
4. Leo Carrillo
Actor | The Guilty Generation
Leo Carrillo was born on August 6, 1881 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was an actor, known for The Guilty Generation (1931), The Cisco Kid (1950) and Crime, Inc. (1945). He was married to Edith Shakespear Haeselbarth. He died on September 10, 1961 in Santa Monica, California, USA.
played Pancho Villa in several productions, including over 150 episodes of "The Cisco Kid"
5. Andy Clyde
Actor | Three Men from Texas
Andy Clyde's more than 40-year film career started on the vaudeville stages and music halls in his native Scotland in the 1920s. He made his way to Hollywood and began as an extra in Mack Sennett comedies, but he was soon moved up to featured player, usually the sidekick or second banana to the ...
replaced Gabby Hayes as Hopalong Cassidy's sidekick and played California Carlson for years in movies and on television and radio
6. Ken Curtis
Actor | Gunsmoke
Considering the kind of scruffy, backwoods, uneducated, Deep-South hillbilly types he played, many people would be surprised to hear that Ken Curtis wasn't actually born in the south but in the small town of Las Animas, Colorado, the son of the town sheriff. They would probably be even more ...
appeared in many John Ford films, over 300 episodes of Gunsmoke as Festus
7. Andy Devine
Actor | Stagecoach
Rotund comic character actor of American films. Born Andrew Vabre Devine in Flagstaff, Arizona, he was raised in nearby Kingman, Arizona, the son of an Irish-American hotel operator Thomas Devine and his wife Amy. Devine was an able athlete as a student and actually played semi-pro football under a...
over 100 episodes of "The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok" as Jingles Jones, appeared in several John Ford films
8. Jack Elam
Actor | C'era una volta il West
Colorful American character actor equally adept at vicious killers or grizzled sidekicks. As a child he worked in the cotton fields. He attended Santa Monica Junior College in California and subsequently became an accountant and, at one time, manager of the Bel Air Hotel. Elam got his first movie ...
over 200 credits in western films and tv shows
9. George 'Gabby' Hayes
Actor | Randy Rides Alone
American character actor, the most famous of Western-movie sidekicks of the 1930s and 1940s. He was born May 7, 1885, the third of seven children, in the Hayes Hotel (owned by his father) in the tiny hamlet of Stannards, New York, on the outskirts of Wellsville, New York. Hayes was the son of ...
sidekick to William Boyd in the Hopalong Cassidy films, sidekick to John Wayne 15 times
10. Slim Pickens
Actor | Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Slim Pickens spent the early part of his career as a real cowboy and the latter part playing cowboys, and he is best remembered for a single "cowboy" image: that of bomber pilot Maj. "King" Kong waving his cowboy hat rodeo-style as he rides a nuclear bomb onto its target in the great black comedy ...
described as the Gabby Hayes of the '60s and '70s, often played the trail boss or cook including in Blazing Saddles
11. Jay Silverheels
Actor | The Lone Ranger
Jay Silverheels was born on Canada's Six Nation's Reserve and was one of 10 children. He was a star lacrosse player and a boxer before he entered films as a stuntman in 1938. He worked in a number of films through the 1940s before gaining notice as the Osceola brother in a Humphrey Bogart film Key ...
The Cowboy and the Indians, over 200 episodes of "The Lone Ranger" as Tonto
12. Al St. John
Actor | Billy the Kid in Texas
Al St. John was born on September 10, 1893 in Santa Ana, California, USA. He was an actor and director, known for Billy the Kid in Texas (1940), Prairie Badmen (1946) and Billy the Kid Trapped (1942). He was married to Yvonne June Villon Price Pearce (actress), Lillian Marion Ball and Flo-Bell ...
sidekick of Buster Crabbe, Robert Livingston and Lash La Rue, appeared in over 300 films including several for Mack Sennett with the Keystone Cops
13. Chill Wills
Actor | Giant
Colorful character actor of American Westerns. Named "Chill" as an ironic comment on his birth date being the hottest day of 1902. A musician from his youth, he performed from the age of 12 with tent shows, in vaudeville, and with stock companies. While performing in vaudeville in Kansas City, he ...
The Alamo, The Rounders, only performer nominated for an Oscar for playing a sidekick
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