Don Terry — Actor by Accident (1938) 🇺🇸
Into the discard, so far as Don Terry, Columbia contract player, is concerned, goes that old and often proved Hollywood saying: They Never Come Back. For, after eight years spent on Broadway in such shows as "The Front Page," "Holiday," "Please Do Not Disturb," and at various "barn theatres" — among them the famous Locust Valley Playhouse — this capable, handsome and husky actor is back in Hollywood.
Therefore you can credit Old Man Fate with another swift kick in the vestibule of his trousers since Actor Terry was so certain he'd be here for only one picture that he bought a round-trip ticket when he shoved off from New York. So pleased was Columbia with his work in "Dangerous Adventure," his talking debut, that the studio grabbed the second half of his round -tripper and exchanged it for a long-term contract.
Terry's real name is Donald Prescott Loker. The actor's family tree has sprouted numerous branches that have contributed outstanding personalities to American history. There's the Colonel Prescott, for instance, who commanded the Revolutionary troops at Bunker Hill.
Another is Henry Loker, slave trader, who was mentioned by name in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Actor Terry was educated at Phillips Andover Academy and Harvard University, graduating from the latter in 1929. He took part in several Hasty Pudding shows during his collegiate years but displayed little, if any, leanings toward the stage as a career. Outside of his studies his chief interest was in the ungentle art of fisticuffs and he learned how to swing leather well enough not only to become the heavyweight boxing champion of his school, but to be declared the winner of three intercollegiate boxing tournaments.
"I was headed for 'down under' in 1929," explained Terry when we asked him to tell how he got into the acting business, "to appear in amateur bouts under the patronage of a wealthy friend of mine. The idea that I'd ever be an actor never entered my mind. One night, Charles Francis Coe, the author, saw me in a Hollywood restaurant and introduced himself. Coe, in his time, could swing a mean pair of dukes and our talk, mostly, was devoted to boxing. I went on to San Francisco and was just checking out of my hotel when I received a wire from Coe asking me to appear in a film version of Me, Gangster, a novel of the prize ring then running in a national magazine. I took a boat as I had planned, but it was a coastwise one bound for Los Angeles. I made two other pictures before I called it quits." Turning his back on a promising screen career, Terry, with adventure stirring his blood, went on a long South Seas cruise with F. W. Murnau during which the German director sought location setting for his picture, Tabu.
"I returned to New York after that trip," Terry says, "and wound up on Broadway as a leading man playing in a great number of shows between 1930 and 1937. My summer vacations were spent on the barn theatre circuit. I had no intention of ever coming to Hollywood until the day I walked out of the cast of a play I considered unsuitable for me. Friends finally persuaded me to come here for just one picture. Next thing I knew I had my name to a long-term contract with Columbia, cast in American Legion. I guess I'm here to stay."
There seems to be a pretty well established rumor that Terry is going to knock 'em as cold in Hollywood as he did when he was the master boxer of Harvard. In other words, they're betting he's a winner.
Don Terry, now making "American Legion" at Columbia, thinks it is easy to break into Hollywood. All you have to do is not try, if his experience is an example.
Charlie McCarthy was so affected by the enthusiastic response to his acting in The Goldwyn Follies that he had to be carried out of the theatre after the preview. Edgar Bergen looks pleased, too, but who wouldn't with Andrea Leeds along?
Collection: Hollywood Magazine, April 1938