Kenneth Jones Terrell, a stuntman and actor, was born on April 29, 1904, in Coolidge, Georgia. At the age of fourteen, Terrell relocated with his family to Atlanta, Georgia.
Terrell attended Georgia Tech with the intention of playing football, but unfortunately, he was deemed too small to make the team. Undeterred, he responded to a newspaper ad for Earle Liederman's Physical Culture mail order program, which proved to be a successful endeavor. He won the Earle Liederman Most Perfectly Developed Man contest multiple times in the mid-1920s.
Following an initial attempt at a show business career in vaudeville, Terrell struggled to make a living in New York City as a model in a 5th Avenue department store window. He eventually left New York for Chicago, Illinois, where he secured a booking on the Keith Vaudeville Circuit and worked with various partners, including James Fawcett.
In 1937, Terrell, Fawcett, and Fawcett's wife Helen Thurston headed west to pursue their luck in Hollywood, California. Terrell found employment performing stunts and playing small roles in numerous Westerns. His peak period as a stuntman lasted from 1937 to the late 1950s.
However, in 1958, Terrell's career as a stuntman was abruptly curtailed when he broke his foot during the shooting of a TV commercial for Chevrolet cars. Unable to fully recover from his injury and resume stunt work full-time, Ken focused more on acting roles in various movies and TV shows instead.
Terrell's health declined in his later years, and he passed away alone from arteriosclerosis on March 8, 1966.
