[1] He graduated from Malden High School then worked in the U.S. West on the government Reclamation projects for several years until 1914 when he returned home and took a job as a reporter covering legislative events at the State House in Boston.
By 1925 Elliot Paul had already seen three of his novels published when he left America to join many of his literary compatriots in the Montparnasse Quarter of Paris, France.
He had completed three more books when he suffered from a nervous breakdown and abruptly left Paris to recuperate in the Spanish village of Santa Eulalia on the island of Ibiza.
Back in the United States following the outbreak of World War II, Elliot Paul turned to screenwriting where in Hollywood, between 1941 and 1953, he participated in the writing of ten screenplays, the most remembered of which is the 1945 production, Rhapsody in Blue; he also wrote the screenplay for the Poverty Row production of New Orleans, a fictional history of Storyville jazz featuring Billie Holiday in her only acting role.
Paul married and divorced five times - Rosa Gertrude Brown (1919-1925), Camille Haynes (1925-1937), Flora Thompson (1937-1940), Barbara Mayock (1940-1949), and Nancy Dolan McMahon (1950-1957).