Patrick Layton Paulsen was born on July 6, 1927, in South Bend, Washington, a small fishing town, to Beulah Inez (Fadden) and Norman Inge Paulsen, who worked for the Coast Guard.
His father was a Norwegian immigrant, and his maternal grandmother was English. The family moved to California when he was 10, and after graduating from high school, Pat joined the U.S. Marine Corps during the waning days of World War II.
Demobilized after the war, Paulsen worked a variety of jobs, including postal clerk, truck driver, hod carrier, and miner. Two jobs that prepared him for the campaign trail that lay in his future were Fuller brush salesman, toiling door to door selling his product with a smile on his face, and photostat operator, making numerous copies of documents.
He attended San Francisco City College on the G.I. bill. After his college studies, Paulsen joined an acting company before forming a comedy trio that included his brother Lorin, who continues to entertain with a one-man show as Abraham Lincoln.
