Walt Disney was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1901, the fourth son in a family of five from a lower middle class family. His father, Elias, who was Canadian, was an unsuccessful farmer, carpenter, and businessman, and his mother, Flora Call, was a patient women who supported her husband through his numerous pursuits. Although it appears that his early life was not marked by harmony and stability, a happy family life is a recurrent theme in all of Disney's work.
In 1906, the Disneys moved from Chicago to a farm near Marceline, Missouri. Later, Disney would remember the friendliness of rural life, but also the hard work that he and his family were forced to perform in order to get the farm established. When his two older brothers left the farm and returned to Chicago, the farm began to fail. It was on the farm that Disney's interest in art began to show itself; he and his sister Ruth would take sticks dipped in tar and paint on the side of the family's white house. In The Disney Version: The Life, Times, Art and Commerce of Walt Disney, Richard Schickel quoted Disney as saying, "I recall when I was about seven.
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