---
name: "Lora Hays"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/lora-hays"
roles: ["Editor"]
born: "1 January 1910"
died: "1 January 2009"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 1
updated: "2026-09-17T04:48:58.205508+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Lora Hays

Editor. Born 1 January 1910 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA. Died 1 January 2009.

## Details

- **Work:** Editor
- **Born:** 1 January 1910, Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA
- **Died:** 1 January 2009
- **Elsewhere:** https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q64014696, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0006349/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/982916

## Streaming the US now

- **HBO Max:** [*Harlan County U.S.A.*](https://film.one/film/harlan-county-u-s-a.md) (88)

For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country.

## Biography

Lora Hays (later Spindell) was an American film editor who worked primarily on documentary films and television. She received a consulting editor credit on the 1976 documentary *Harlan County, USA*, directed by Barbara Kopple.

Hays began her career in the theatre, appearing in the 1929 play *Little Accident* before working as an actress in Paris. She later trained as an assistant editor under Joris Ivens on *Power and the Land* (1940). Among her other credits are the supervising editor role on the 1970 documentary *King: A Filmed Record... Montgomery to Memphis*, which received an Academy Award nomination, and editing work on *America and Lewis Hine* (1984). She also edited episodes of the CBS series *The Twentieth Century* in the early 1960s.

In later years Hays taught film editing at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts. She was the daughter of civil liberties lawyer Arthur Garfield Hays.

*Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com, catalog.afi.com.*

## On Fi1m (1)

- *Harlan County U.S.A.* (1976), Fi1m 88, Editor — [page](https://film.one/film/harlan-county-u-s-a.md)

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/lora-hays