In the late-forties and early-fifties, the newly available invention called television came along and squashed the once thriving market for short and cheap Saturday matinée features. A few series, mainly The Durango Kid, tried to weather the storm, but folded after a few short years.
Not surprisingly, many of the genre's stars and character actors, as well as the directors and producers that worked on the matinée films, found themselves employed by the very same medium that ended their work on the big screen. Of those people, it seems that the easiest job of all was filled by George "Gabby" Hayes.
He didn't have to do anything, just sit around in a chair, or on a step for a few minutes and spin a yarn, before leaving the hard work to Tex Ritter, Lash Larue, or whomever had the pleasure to star in a movie by the then defunct Producers Releasing Corporation.
The results were fairly agreeable, bite-size western nuggets, whittled down from old hour-long features to fit the twenty-or-so remaining minutes of programming.
Not a bad job at all, not a bad show either.