The Path of Jay Kerr

Jay graduated in 1966 and has had an interesting, every changing path in life.

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Early in his life, growing up on the Kerr ranch, he developed a knack with horses. He started showing horses professionally at age twelve. He showed three horses that were in the top ten in the world of cutting and won the State Championship while attending Del Rio High.

In High School Jay was a free spirit personality – always cutting up, he acted in school plays and a little at the Paul Poage Theatre – acting rewarded him with several professional roles:

In 1981 in “Hard Country”, also the same year “Red Flag: The Ultimate Game”. Then he landed a two-year stint in the soap “The Young and the Restless” (1982-1983). In 1983 he also starred in “Wizards and Warriors”.

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Since Jay was dashingly good looking he landed on the “Young Hunks of Hollywood” calendar in 1983.

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1987 brought on another role titled “1st and Ten” and “Race Against Harvest”.

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n 1993 Jay appeared on The John Larroquette Show.

Sample ImageA Disney series, filmed in Australia, which ran for several years called “Five Mile Creek” Jay starred as Con Madigan.

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From his start in movies as a stunt person to his role as Hardy in the Japanese film ‘East Meets West’, Mr. Kerr had an eclectic, exciting career before retiring from acting.

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Jay Kerr: “I wrote a movie about my best friend George Paul. He was a world champion bull rider his first year in pro rodeo, and owned a million acre ranch in Mexico, and had a very interesting life because he lived in two cultures, Mexico and the United States. He was in poverty as a kid, living in a used clothes store, but ended up having his own airplane before he was twenty-four years old. Then he died tragically after he crashed his plane his second year in pro rodeo.” (George Paul attended schools in Del Rio until his freshman year. Thereafter he stayed at his grandfather’s (George Meier) ranch in Mexico, where he finished school with private teachers).

Jay Kerr: “I also have a story about a little league baseball team called ‘Twelve Little Men’, and a movie called ‘Champagne Perfec’t -- kind of like ‘The African Queen’, except it's set up on a mountain, and it's about an old rancher and a younger woman and their conflicts. I'm very proud of that script. In Find Fred, this movie I wrote set in Australia, Fred's a girl. A Vietnam cowboy goes down to Australia to try to find this girl who is lost, and her old cowboy father says on his deathbed "Fred's down there, go find her," and . . . ahhh, I don't want to give away a whole lot on it, but I think it could be a blockbuster.”

Jay Kerr: “Right now, I'm finishing ‘The Bootlegger’, Benny Binion's story. When I was 22 years old, I was one of the youngest pit bosses in Las Vegas after I was hired at the Binion's Horseshoe casino. Benny Binion is a cowboy from Texas, and George had told him about me, and he hired me. I didn't know anything about cards, but he told his son, Ted, "When you get back to Vegas, you make him a boss." And Ted said, "He doesn't know how to shuffle or anything!" But Mr. Binion said, "I like the way he thinks. He makes good decisions and he's super loyal, so he's a boss." So I went back, and everybody was mad and jealous of me, but I had a lot of fun. I would work at his casinos in the winter as a boss, and in the summers I would break horses at his 250 square mile ranch in Montana. He had 300 brood mares, and I rode nothing but geldings. I'd break horses over five and six years old, and I'd ride them that first day. He taught me so much about breaking horses. His family became my second family. I really loved Mr. Binion.”

Jay Kerr: “I remember when I left, I said, "I'm gonna go do some stunts in a movie in Santa Fe," and he told me, "You're gonna come back with holes in your pants." And I said, "Yeah, but this casino business doesn't really agree with me, Mr. Binion, so I'm just gonna go off and have some fun, and do some stunts in these movies." Then within a year, I had my own TV series

Nowadays Jay spends his spare time working on screenplays and is seen randomly in and around Del Rio while seeking a new path for his life.

Jay ends this way: “If you look at my life and where I've been . . . You know, I wrote a movie about myself called ‘Cowboy in Trouble’. I've never showed it to anybody, but I wrote it and set it away. So, if I die sometime, you can come over to my house, and tell someone to go find that script, and you'll know all about me”. [laughing]

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