Kalmanovitz was born to a Jewish family in Łódź, Poland. Paul emigrated to Egypt at the end of the World War I his family father , mother and brothers remained in Lodz and he later worked for Sir Edmund Henry Hynman Allenby. Kalmanowitz arrived in the United States in the 1926 by jumping a merchant marine ship and jumped from job to job, working for several notable people such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, william Randolph Hearst, and Louis B. Mayer (MGM). In 1945 Paul Kalmanovitz received a letter from his niece , Sonia Kalmanowicz , the daughter of his oldest brother Joseph Kalmanowicz, in this letter she informed Paul that his brother had died in Auschwitz in 1944 and that she and her brother Stanislas had survived Auschwitz. He immediately arranged to apply for a visa number for them to enter the United States, by 1946 Stanislas was granted a visa , Sonia by then had decided to remain in France. Stanislas departed from Le Havre in April 1946 in steerage on the SS Oregon a ship of WWI vintage. You will notice that Paul when he entered the United States changed the spelling of the family name from Kalmanowicz to Kalmanovitz, so when Stanilas arrived in New York he officially changed his name to Stanley Kalmanovitz.

In 1950 Kalmanovitz acquired the Maier Brewing Company in Los Angeles, California and officially entered the brewing industry. Maier Brewing, makers of Brew 102, struggled for a number of years, and in 1958 faced a strong push to be bought out by the Falstaff Brewing Company. Kalmanovitz refused to be bought out, even after being threatened by Falstaff to either sell or Falstaff would bury the Maier Brewery. Within a few years Kalmanovitz turned the Maier Brewery around and began making a profit. Along with the brewery and numerous other Investments, Kalmanovitz's net worth began to swell. In 1970 Kalmanovitz purchased Lucky Lager and merged it with his Maier Brewing Company to form the General Brewing Company with S&P Corporation as its parent.

In 1975, after Kalmanovitz gained control of Falstaff, most of its 175 corporate office employees were laid off. Some of the employee's severance checks bounced. “Kalmanovitz thought nothing of throwing hundreds of brewery workers out onto the streets, cutting off their pension and health benefits … ” according to one Historian. Forbes magazine wrote that “Kalmanovitz went through Falstaff like Grant through Richmond. ... He took no prisoners.”

In a 1979 court case, Bloor v. Falstaff, Kalmanovitz's brewery was fined $1.3 million. The judges described his management style as "Profit Uber Alles".

Paul Kalmanovitz's whose mother and brothers died in the ghetto of Lodz and the Auschwitz concentration camp denied he was Jewish until he died. In addition he told all of his associates that he had no family left alive, while to the contrary his nephew, now 86, Stanley Kalmanovitz and his niece Sophie Kalmanovitz, who died in 2015, both of whom survived Auschwitz, were alive during his life.