Walter Crawford Kelly Jr. was born in Philadelphia on August 25, 1913. His family moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut, when he was only two. He went to California at age 22 to work on "Donald Duck" cartoons at Walt Disney Studios in 1935. He stayed until the animators' strike in 1941 as an animator on "The Nifty Nineties", "The Little Whirlwind", "Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo" and "The Reluctant Dragon". Kelly then worked for Dell Comics, a division of Western Publishing of Racine, Wisconsin.