Career
Born in Los Angeles, Marco started taking lessons in drama, singing and dancing at an early age. After graduating from Hollywood High School, he served in the Navy during World World War World War II His first known movie role was a small part in the 1944 film Sweet and Low-Down with Benny Goodman, Jo Stafford, and The Pied Pipers. In the early 1950s, The Amazing Criswell predicted on national television that Paul Marco would go far in the motion picture business.
Criswell introduced Marco to Editor Wood shortly thereafter.
In turn, Marco introduced Editor Wood to Bunny Breckinridge, a flamboyantly gay Shakespearean actor who lived with Marco for a time and co-starred in Wood"s Plan 9 from Outer Space. Marco depended on Wood for parts, and he more or less retired as an actor as Editor Wood"s movies shifted more and more towards pornography for the last twenty years of his life.
According to Tim Burton"s 1994 movie Editor Wood, Paul Marco founded his own fan club, of which he then served as president, and spent his time signing autographs (Marco was portrayed in Burton"s film by actor Max Casella). In 1995 Marco recorded a 45, "Home on the Strange", in which he reprised his Kelton character for Dionysus Records.
He revived Kelton once more in the 2005 science fiction satire/tribute film The Naked Monster, which also featured actors from The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Thing from Another World, The War of the Worlds, Beyond the Time Barrier, and The Indestructible Manitoba, all reprising the roles they had played in the cited earlier films.
Marco hoped for a career revival with the "Dark Corner" series of shorts. He completed the first, entitled Kelton"s Dark Corner (by Vasily Shumov), and was planning to shoot several scenes for the second before his death. On May 14, 2006, Paul Marco died after a battle with hip problems and chronic illness, at the age of 78.