The Nightmare Before Christmas star Ken Page dead at 70: The actor was also a Broadway
The Nightmare Before Christmas star Ken Page, who enjoyed a glittering career on Broadway, has died at the age of 70.
His friend, television producer Dorian Hannaway, announced his passing on Monday but did not disclose the cause of death.
‘Ken Page has passed onto the next show. My heart is broken,’ she wrote on her Facebook page, prompting an outpouring of grief-stricken comments.
Page was a mainstay of the New York stage, playing major roles in the original Broadway productions of such hit musicals as Cats and The Wiz.
He won a new generation of fans in the 1990s as the voice of Oogie Boogie, the villain of Tim Burton‘s animated classic The Nightmare Before Christmas.
The Nightmare Before Christmas star Ken Page, who enjoyed a glittering career on Broadway, has died at the age of 70; pictured this April
Page was born in 1954 in St. Louis, Missouri, where he developed an interest in the arts as a child, listening to Barbra Streisand and reading the novel To Sir, With Love.
He was always entranced by the theater, writing and directing musicals when he was in middle school, according to St. Louis magazine.
After studying theater at college on a full scholarship, he struck out to New York City in the mid-1970s to make his bones on the stage.
Just two years after his arrival in New York, he made his Broadway debut in the all-black 1976 revival of the classic 1950s musical Guys And Dolls.
Page had a plum character part, playing a gambler who leads a prayer meeting with the barnstorming gospel number Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ The Boat.
HIs turn in Guys And Dolls established him on Broadway and set him up for one of the biggest roles of his career – the Cowardly Lion in The Wiz.
The Wiz originally opened in 1975 with Ted Ross in the role of the Lion, with Page eventually stepping in as his replacement.
Page always spoke glowingly of the show in artistic terms – but the rigorous choreography and the heavy costume caused him to have health problems.
Just two years after his arrival in New York, he made his Broadway debut in the all-black 1976 revival of Guys And Dolls; he is pictured (right) in the show with Christophe Pierre (left)
His sweat was trapped in by the costume and began seeping toxically back into his body, on top of which he developed knee problems from crawling around onstage.
Only then did he discover that Ted Ross had ‘had to have his knees drained once a week’ while in The Wiz, Page told A Musical Theater Podcast.
Page ultimately left the show because of his mounting medical issues, but always retained an affection for the material, attending the opening night of a revival of The Wiz on Broadway earlier this year.
Next came another professional coup – Page starred in the lead role in the original Broadway cast of the beloved stage piece Ain’t Misbehavin’ in 1978.
Ain’t Misbehavin’ was a jukebox musical devoted to the life and work of Fats Waller, an interwar jazz legend whose mannerisms were uncannily captured by Page.