Michael J. Weldon's Psychotronic Video Magazine's interview with actor Paul Koslo.

Paul Koslo

Interview by Justin Humphreys

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Paul Koslo was born Manfred Koslowski (pronounced Kos-lov-ski) on June 27, 1944 in Germany, the son of a Prussian soldier. "When I was a kid, when I was living in Germany, when I was about four years old, I was cognizant of the fact that these big Sherman tanks of the GIs, the American troops, would go rumbling down the street. You couldn't miss it because the earth would shake for miles around. And we'd be out there in awe, me and my other friends in the neighborhood. We and other people would be standing there watching. And the GIs would be throwing out Wrigley's chewing gum and Hershey's chocolate bars and kids would be there in droves fighting for them. The country was pretty devastated after losing the war and the Americans had taken over. All the citizens would meet, mostly, in the beer gardens and would talk amongst themselves about what was going to happen to their country, I guess. So a lot of us kids were left on our own for long periods of time. So what I did was I started to daydream and I found out about cowboys and Indians from the Americans. So we used to play cowboys and Indians. It was a natural progression from the Americans, since nobody else had cowboys and Indians and we were really intrigued by that.

My dad came (to America) in the fifties and we came shortly after. We moved to Regina, Saskatchewan in Canada, which, at that time, was like Podunk (laughs). In the fifties, things were first beginning to get technologized across the country, so you can imagine what it was like there. I spoke German. I'm of Polish and Russian grandparents- obviously with the name Koslowski. My native tongue was German and it was really tough trying to adjust. But when you're a kid, you can learn another language really easily. It took I'd say a couple of years to adjust. My mother was a homemaker until later when she used to run a deli in a big Safeway supermarket up in Canada. And my dad did a bunch of different things. When we first moved to Regina, he worked for a German newspaper, he swept floors in Simpson's (a Canadian version of Sears), and he was a private detective and built his own home, all at the same time. So he was definitely doing twenty-four hour days for the first couple of years. I think that's probably what eventually killed him, because he died when he was about fifty-seven of emphysema. He was a smoker, so it was probably all the pressure. He got asthma and it turned to emphysema. He actually died in the hospital bed with a lit cigarette burning in his fingers. And if the nurse hadn't walked by the room and noticed that the cigarette was burning- she smelled something- she smelled the skin. She just happened to look. She said if she hadn't done that, then the whole hospital could have burned. It's amazing what cigarettes can do.

When we were in Canada, in Regina, I saw my first film about a year after we arrived. It was five cents to get in and the popcorn was free. It wasn't till later that they charged for popcorn. The first movie I ever saw was (a Tarzan movie) starring Gordon Scott. When I saw a picture, like another world on a wall, y'know, I couldn't fathom that but I related to it instantly because it was like inside my mind when I imagined things, playing cowboys and Indians. And then I knew, right then and there, that I wanted to be an actor, from then on. I guess I was about eight years old. I couldn't relate to people, although I knew I was a person, because I could talk like they could. But usually, we (kids) were just pushed out of the way. Because our parents were busy trying to build a new life. And they didn't know what was going to be happening to themselves in Germany, either, and I think that's when my dad made the choice to emigrate to Canada. And it was natural from when I saw that (movie) for me to want to go into that or want to act. Actually, we moved from Regina to West Vancouver, British Columbia, probably in '57 or '58. I went to school in Horseshoe Bay Elementary School and then I went to junior- and high school at West Vancouver High. But I was always the guy that was sort of a little bit in trouble, I was like one of the two percent-ers (laughs). We'd do all kinds of silly stuff, like when the principal would be about to start the hundred-yard dash- he'd always be the one to fire the starter's gun- we'd throw a dead, plucked chicken onto the track. Or if I was running on the track team, if they were doing the mile race or something- one side of the track was on the slope of a hill, so I would get to the outside lane and, after a couple of rounds, I would just duck down on the side of the hill on the far side of the track and, then, when it came to the last lap, I would pop back up [laughs] and be like a hundred yards ahead of everybody. Of course, I got reprimanded pretty badly. There was sort of like a gang of us. Other stuff we would do was , when they'd check all the combination locks, they'd all be off of the lockers, so we'd sneak around and take all the combination locks and lock them up together. You can imagine: they'd have to go and get the files in the principal's office and go through all the numbers. Stuff like that. Really weird stuff. But we had a lot of fun, too. We'd have "best leg" contests, boys against the girls. We'd wear panty hose, we'd shave our legs. It was a hoot.