Marshall Terrill's Biography

Marshall Terrill is an American author and journalist. He is noted for biographies on Steve McQueen, Elvis Presley and Pete Maravich.

After high school Terrill moved to Phoenix, Arizona. While studying business he worked for financier Charles Keating beginning in 1984. Five years later Keating’s company, Lincoln Savings & Loan, was the target of a federal investigation. Keating was sent sentenced to jail and Terrill was suddenly unemployed. At age 26, he moved back into his parents’ home in Northern Virginia and began his second career, as a biographer. His first subject: actor Steve McQueen.

Terrill spent the next three-and-a-half years researching the life of McQueen. In December 1993, the 564-page Steve McQueen: Portrait of an American Rebel, was released. The book, noted for its exhaustive research, was featured in numerous publications including USA Today, New York Post, Cosmopolitan, Playboy, Chicago Tribune, Entertainment Weekly, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post, Orange County Register, Albuquerque Journal and the Arizona Republic. Steve McQueen was a best-seller and has gone into four printings. It also launched Terrill’s literary career.

Terrill moved back to Phoenix in 1994 and followed his biography on McQueen with collaborations on actor Edd "Kookie" Byrnes (Edd Byrnes: Kookie No More) and Barbara Leigh (The King, McQueen and the Love Machine), boxers Ken Norton (Going the Distance), Earnie Shavers (Welcome to the Big Time) and Aaron Pryor (Flight of the Hawk), and baskeball legend David Thompson (Skywalker).

In 1999, Terrill was hired by the East Valley Tribune as a daily reporter.

He and his wife Zoe also co-authored Sergeant Presley in 2002 with Rex and Elisabeth Mansfield.

That same year he took a job with the Chandler Connection, a weekly publication in Chandler, Arizona which morphed into the Ocotillo Tribune in August 2007.

Terrill was hired in 2008 by Arizona State University's Public Affairs Division promoting the university's campus in downtown Phoenix.

2005 saw the 25th anniversary of Steve McQueen's death and with it came another re-examination of his life and work. London-based Plexus publishing updated Steve McQueen: Portrait of an American Rebel, with a new beginning and end chapter. That same year, Terrill met McQueen's last wife and widow, Barbara, and the two began working on a photo book.

In October 2006, Terrill released Maravich, co-authored by Wayne Federman, an exhaustively researched biography on the basketball great, who died on January 5, 1988 from a heart defect. Focus on the Family/Tyndale Publishing released the paperback version of the book in September 2008 called Pete Maravich: The Authorized Biography of Pistol Pete Maravich.

Terrill also released Steve McQueen: The Last Mile, which is a 250-page photo book containing more than 150 photos of the actor taken by Barbara McQueen.

Elvis: Still Taking Care of Business was released in May 2007. Terrill co-authored with Sonny West, who was Presley's friend and bodyguard for 16 years. West and Terrill spent four years perfecting the manuscript. The book was released in tradeback in August 2008.

Terrill has several more projects in the works including co-writing the memoirs of Palm Springs' Mel Haber. The legendary restaurateur and innkeeper owns the world famous Ingleside Inn and Melyvn's restaurant, located at the foot of the San Jacinto Mountains. Haber's memoir, Palm Springs a la Carte, was published by Barricade Books in January 2009. Terrill will also see the publication of Steve McQueen: A Tribute to the King of Cool in the fall of 2009.