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NEW YORK — Ken Web page, a stage and display screen actor who starred alongside Beyoncé in “Dreamgirls,” launched Broadway audiences to Outdated Deuteronomy in “Cats” and scared generations of children because the voice of Oogie Boogie, the villain of the 1993 animated vacation movie ”The Nightmare Earlier than Christmas,″ has died. He was 70.
Expertise agent Todd M. Eskin of ATB Expertise Company introduced the loss of life Tuesday to The Related Press, however no particulars had been instantly accessible.
“He was merely the most effective, most beneficiant souls I do know. Vigorous and overflowing with pleasure. Gifted after which some. Ken, my buddy, you can be deeply missed,” writer-producer Tim Burton wrote on X.
Web page made his Broadway debut in “The Wiz,” taking part in the Cowardly Lion, and went on to painting Properly-Properly Johnson in “Guys and Dolls” with Robert Guillaume. He additionally was featured within the authentic forged of the Fat Waller musical Ain’t Misbehavin,'” successful a Drama Desk Award, and was aboard when it returned to Broadway in 1988.
Web page originated the position of sensible Outdated Deuteronomy when “Cats” landed on Broadway in 1982 and went on to a then-record run, singing “Outdated Deuteronomy,” “The Moments of Happiness” and “The Advert-Dressing of Cats.”
Elaine Paige, who originated the position of Grizabella in “Cats” and reprised the position within the 1998 “Cats” movie model, paid tribute to her co-star on X, saying Web page “has gone to the heaviside layer” and including, “He was a beautiful, variety, proficient man.”
In 2010, Web page revisited the Outdated Deuteronomy on the Muny — the Municipal Theatre Affiliation of St. Louis — and the critic for the St. Louis Submit-Dispatch stated: “Web page, a looming mild presence, fills the position of the feline spirit information to the hilt,” including, “Perhaps no one’s going to bow to a kitty whereas intoning ‘OH CAT,’ however Web page could make you at the least take into account it.”
Web page would maybe make his deepest influence because the voice of Oogie Boogie, the burlap sack with tons of of bugs crawling within him, in Burton’s ”The Nightmare Earlier than Christmas.″ It was his character’s hope to turn out to be the Seven Holidays King by kidnapping the Vacation Leaders for the opposite holidays. ““It’s hopeless/you’re completed/You haven’t acquired a prayer/’Trigger I’m Mr. Oogie Boogie/And also you ain’t going nowhere,” he sang to Santa.
He would go on to reprise the Oogie Boogie position, together with in video video games and on the film’s 30th anniversary live performance on the Hollywood Bowl in 2023. He additionally voiced King Gator in Disney’s 1989 animated movie “All Canine Go to Heaven.”
His different film credit embrace 1988’s “Torch Track Trilogy,” wherein he performed the witty drag queen Murray, and 2006’s “Dreamgirls,” wherein he performed Max Washington. His TV credit embrace “Household Issues,” “Touched by an Angel” and “Charmed.”
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