Nearing the end of his trip, he decided to have lunch at Hollywood's Café Montmartre since it was a favorite of many in the film industry.

[1] However, Fox screenwriter Charles Francis Coe was at the restaurant and happened to see Terry and thought of the screenplay he had just completed, based on his 1927 novel.

[1] Known for his "typical clean-cut American hero roles,"[4] he was signed by Columbia Pictures as a possible replacement for the studio's veteran action star Jack Holt.

Terry was one of several tough-guy heroes (including Victor Jory, Paul Kelly, and Charles Quigley) who portrayed "bare-knuckled, sleeves-rolled-up hard hats" in various films.

Don Terry also became a star of serials, his first chapter play being The Secret of Treasure Island, released by Columbia in 1938.

Terry signed with Universal in 1939, appearing in an incidental role in the W. C. Fields comedy You Can't Cheat an Honest Man.

[11] Other credits include Fugitives (1929), Border Romance (1929), Barnacle Bill (1941), Sherlock Holmes in Washington (1943), and White Savage (1943), his last screen appearance before enlisting in the U.S. Navy.

[13] The couple had two daughters, and after completing his World War II service, Terry dropped his screen name and went to work for StarKist as vice president of public and industrial relations.