Walter "Walt" Elias Disney was born on December 5,1901 in Chicago, Illinois. Walt was one of the five kids, four boys and one girl, raised by Elias Disney and Flora Call Disney. Walt was raised on a farm near Marceline, Missouri; he became interested in drawing and sketching at a very young age. In fact, when he was younger he would often sell his sketches to his peers, neighbors, and family friends. Disney attended McKinley High School, where he took sketching and photography classes, and he soon became a contributing cartoonist for the school newspaper. Not only did he take his regular high school classes, but he also took night courses at the Chicago Art Institute.
walt disney
When Walt was sixteen years old he attempted to join the U.S army; however, he was rejected due to the fact that he was underage. Instead, he joined the Red Cross and was sent to France for a year to drive an ambulance. When Disney returned from France in 1919, he moved back to Kansas City to pursue a career as a newspaper artist.His brother Roy got him a job at the Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio, where he met cartoonist Ubbe Iwerks. From there, Disney worked at the Kansas City Film Ad Company, where he made commercials based on cutout animation. Around this time, Disney began experimenting with a camera, doing hand-drawn animations, and decided to open his own animation business.
walt disney
In the process of making his own animation business, he recruited a fellow employee from the ad company, Fred Harman, as his first employee. Both Disney and Harman made a deal with a local Kansas City theater to screen their cartoons, which they called Laugh-O-Grams. The cartoons were hugely popular, and Disney was able to acquire his own studio, upon which he bestowed the same name. Laugh-O-Gram hired a number of employees, including Harman's brother Hugh and Ubbe Iwerks. They did a series of seven-minute fairy tales that combined both live action and animation, which they called Alice in Cartoonland. However, the company did not last due to the fact that the company was in debt could not be paid off. Although he could not continue his company, he changed the world by being an American filmmaker and businessman, who created a new kind of popular culture with feature-length animated cartoons and live-action family films.