Born April 18, 1926, in Elkin, North Carolina, Harold Hayes earned an undergraduate degree from Wake Forest College, worked for United Press in Atlanta, served in the Marines, moved to New York City 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.

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.

[2] 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.

His editorial risks extended into graphic innovation by publishing Carl Fischer and George Lois's iconic covers like Sonny Liston wearing a Santa Claus hat, Andy Warhol disappearing in a can of Campbell's soup, and Muhammad Ali posing as St. Sebastian.

In 2013, his son Tom produced and directed a documentary about his father, similarly titled Smiling Through the Apocalypse: Esquire in the 60s, featuring interviews with many of the surviving writers under Harold Hayes' tutelage.