Harold Hayes

Harold Thomas Pace Hayes
Died	1989
Occupation	Esquire editor, writer
Notable credit(s)	The Dark Romance of Dian Fossey

Harold Thomas Pace Hayes (April 18, 1926 – April 5, 1989), editor of Esquire magazine from 1963 to 1973, was a main architect of the New Journalism movement.

As an editor, Hayes appreciated bold writing and points of view, favoring writers with a flair for ferreting out the spirit of the time -- writers like Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, Michael Herr, John Sack, Gore Vidal, William F. Buckley, Garry Wills, Gina Berriault, and Nora Ephron. George Lois branded the magazine with iconic covers (one showed Andy Warhol disappearing in a can of Campbell's soup). Fiction editor Gordon Lish brought in stories by Raymond Carver. Diane Arbus contributed photographs. Robert Benton and David Newman thought up the Dubious Achievement Awards (and in their spare time wrote the screenplay for the movie Bonnie and Clyde).

More a general interest magazine than a men's magazine then, Esquire was "a big, unruly book, its contents unbound by formulaic notions of what belonged there," Carol Polsgrove wrote in It Wasn't Pretty, Folks, But Didn't We Have Fun?, her history of the Hayes era at Esquire.

Biography

Born April 18, 1926, in Elkin, North Carolina, Hayes earned an undergraduate degree from Wake Forest College, worked for United Press in Atlanta, served in the Marines, moved to New York to work for a small magazine called Pageant, and wound up in 1956 at Esquire, where he battled with several other young editors, among them Clay Felker (who went on to found New York magazine), for the job of top editor. Hayes won that contest, becoming first managing editor and then, on October 1, 1963, editor.

After Hayes left Esquire in 1973, he hosted a public television interview program, worked briefly as an editorial producer for 20/20, became editorial director of CBS magazines and then editor of California magazine. He wrote three books on Africa -- The Last Place on Earth, Three Levels of Time, and The Dark Romance of Dian Fossey, the last developed from a November 1986 essay in Life magazine and later the basis for the 1988 film Gorillas in the Mist.

He died in 1989 in Los Angeles, California, leaving a widow, Judy Kessler Hayes (he was divorced from his first wife, Susan Hayes), a daughter, Carrie O'Brien, and a son, Thomas.