Walter Elias Disney was born in Chicago on December 5, 1901, the fourth of Flora and Elias Disney's five children. Of his siblings, Walt formed an especially close bond with his brother Roy, eight and a half years his senior. They became best friends and, in later years, business partners.

 

When Walt was four years old his family moved from Chicago to a farm in Marceline, Missouri, where he enjoyed the idyllic rural life and first discovered his love of drawing. Five years later the Disneys moved again, this time to the contrasting urban environment of Kansas City. Elias had bought a Kansas City Star paper route, and young Walt worked long hours delivering morning and evening papers while simultaneously attending school. It was in Kansas City, too, that he discovered the world of motion pictures, vaudeville, and amusement parks.

 

In 1917 Walt and his parents moved back to Chicago. When the United States entered World War I, Roy joined the navy. Walt, too young for the armed forces, joined the Red Cross instead. He arrived in France just after the Armistice and drove an ambulance there for a year during the army's cleanup operation.

 

Upon his return to the States, Walt was determined to pursue a career as a cartoonist. The Kansas City Film Ad Company, which produced advertising films for local theaters, hired him, and here a momentous event occurred: Walt was introduced to the world of animated cartoons. So intrigued was he that he experimented on his own, then formed an animation studio: Laugh-O-gram Films Inc. But the little company soon failed, and in 1923 Walt boarded a train to try his luck in Hollywood.