AllMovie

A pretty brunette, Sally Payne was something as unusual in B-Westerns as the heroine's comic sidekick. Payne had the field virtually to herself in the early '40s and she made the most of it, whether exchanging verbal blows with George "Gabby" Hayes or flirting with him. She had made her screen debut in a Western, the 1936 Gene Autry vehicle The Big Show, and horse operas would remain her bread and butter. But Payne also showed her versatility in comedy shorts at RKO (replacing Florence Lake as the wife in the Edgar Kennedy two-reelers) and MGM. In the end, she earned her greatest popularity opposite Roy Rogers at Republic Pictures, playing Calamity Jane to Roger's Young Bill Hickock (1940) in the first of ten Westerns they made together. Despite her growing popularity, Payne retired in 1942 to marry an airline executive. In her later years, she ran a bookstore in Bel Air, CA.