Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920, in Waukegan, Illinois, to Esther (née Moberg) Bradbury (1888–1966), a Swedish immigrant, and Leonard Spaulding Bradbury (1890–1957), a power and telephone lineman of English ancestry.[5][6][7][8] He was given the middle name "Douglas" after actor Douglas Fairbanks.
Bradbury was surrounded by an extended family during his early childhood and formative years in Waukegan. An aunt read him short stories when he was a child.[9] This period provided foundations for both the author and his stories. In Bradbury's fiction, 1920s Waukegan becomes Green Town, Illinois.
Bradbury as a senior in high school, 1938The Bradbury family lived in Tucson, Arizona, during 1926–1927 and 1932–1933 while their father pursued employment, each time returning to Waukegan. While in Tucson, Bradbury attended Amphi Junior High School and Roskruge Junior High School. They eventually settled in Los Angeles in 1934 when Bradbury was 14. The family arrived with only US$40 (equivalent to $911 in 2023), which paid for rent and food until his father finally found a job making wire at a cable company for $14 a week (equivalent to $319 in 2023), allowing them to stay in Hollywood.
Bradbury attended Los Angeles High School and was active in the drama club. He often roller-skated through Hollywood in hopes of meeting celebrities. Among the creative people he met were special-effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen and radio star George Burns. Bradbury's first pay as a writer, at age 14, was for a joke he sold to George Burns to use on the Burns and Allen radio show.[10]
Bradbury was fascinated with carnivals from a young age, and they would feature in such works as The Illustrated Man and Something Wicked This Way Comes. He related a formative event of his youth:
I suppose the most important memory is of Mr. Electrico. On Labor Day weekend, 1932, when I was twelve years old, he came to my hometown with the Dill Brothers … . He was a performer sitting in an electric chair and a stagehand pulled a switch and he was charged with fifty thousand volts of pure electricity. Lightning flashed in his eyes and his hair stood on end. I sat below, in the front row, and he reached down with a flaming sword full of electricity and he tapped me on both shoulders and then the tip of my nose and he cried, "Live, forever!" And I thought, "God, that's wonderful. How do you do that?" ... So when I left the carnival that day I stood by the carousel and I watched the horses running around and around to the music of "Beautiful Ohio" and I cried. Tears streamed down my cheeks because I knew something important had happened to me that day because of Mr. Electrico. I felt changed. And so I went home and within days I started to write. And I've never stopped.[11]
