Everyone knows who Walt Disney was. He is an American cultural icon.\u00a0 His cartoons and characters can be found in every corner of the earth.\u00a0 He was a lifelong Republican.\u00a0 He started from very humble beginnings.\u00a0 He was born in the Hermosa neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, one of five children.\u00a0 He grew up in Marceline, Missouri.\u00a0 It was here that he started to draw and paint, selling his work to neighbors and friends.\u00a0 Later, his family moved to Kansas City.\u00a0 His uncle was a train engineer and it was here that he developed his lifelong love of trains.\u00a0 In Kansas City, he was introduced to vaudeville and motion pictures by a childhood friend\u2019s family.\u00a0 Soon, he was spending most of his free time with this family as well as taking Saturday classes at the Kansas City Art Institute.<\/p>\n
Disney\u2019s father purchased a newspaper route.\u00a0 Walt and his brother Roy woke up at 4:30 am to deliver papers until school started and repeated the routine again at 4:00 pm delivering the evening paper.\u00a0 He and his brother worked the paper route for six years.\u00a0 As a result, Walt Disney did not do well in school and frequently dozed off in class.<\/p>\n
In 1917, Disney\u2019s father bought shares in the O-Zell jelly factory out of Chicago and he moved the family back to Chicago.\u00a0 Disney continued his education taking night courses at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts while attending high school during the day.\u00a0 He dropped out of high at age 16, hoping to join the army during WWI, but was rejected for being too young.\u00a0 He later joined the Red Cross and was sent to France as an ambulance driver.<\/p>\n
Two years later, Disney moved back to Kansas City hoping to find work outside of the jelly factory.\u00a0 He was unable to find employment as either a cartoonist or an ambulance driver.\u00a0 His brother Roy was working at a local bank.\u00a0 He got Walt a temporary job creating ads for newspapers, magazines and movie theaters.\u00a0 This is where Disney met cartoonist Ubbe Iwerks.<\/p>\n
After their contract expired, Disney and Iwerks started their own company Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists.\u00a0 They had a rough start, so Disney left and started working at the Kansas City Film Ad Company. Iwerks followed as he was unable to continue the company alone.\u00a0 It was here that Disney acquired the taste for animation.\u00a0 He bought a camera, a book on making cartoons and experimented at home.\u00a0 He decided then that cell animation was the future.\u00a0 He started his own animation company with one employee, Fred Harmen, a co-worker from Ad Company.<\/p>\n
They started creating \u201cLaugh-O-Grams\u201d cartoons based on Aesop\u2019s Fables.\u00a0 The cartoons were screened at a very popular local theater owned by Frank Newman. These cartoons became hits in the Kansas City area. \u00a0As a result of the success of these cartoons, Disney was able to acquire his own studio and hire additional animators, including his old friend Ubbe Iwerks.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the cartoons were insufficient to sustain the studio and it went bankrupt.\u00a0 It was here that Walt Disney decided to move to the entertainment capital of Hollywood along with his brother Roy, to start over.<\/p>\n
Disney and his brother Roy pooled their money and started their cartoon studio \u201cThe Disney Brothers Studio\u201d two months after arriving in Hollywood.\u00a0 Iwerks moved from Kansas City to Hollywood with his family at Disney\u2019s request as did action star Virginia Davis.\u00a0 This was the beginning of the Disney magic.\u00a0 The rest is history!<\/p>\n
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