Ken Page was a stage baritone first and a film actor hardly at all, but the one voice he lent to the screen that everyone remembers, Oogie Boogie, carries the swing and the threat of a lifetime of showstoppers into Henry Selick's stop-motion.
Fi1m perspective
Listen to Oogie Boogie for a minute in The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and you can hear where Ken Page came from. The voice is a rich, booming baritone with a swing-band bounce under it, and it does not stop performing even when the character is only talking. Page said he was aiming for a cross between Bert Lahr, Cab Calloway and the demon in The Exorcist, and that is roughly what arrives: a music-hall villain who is also, for a children's film, properly frightening. Henry Selick's film lets its monsters stay peculiar, and Page is the one who enjoys being wicked out loud, the demonstrative side of a musical that is otherwise rather tender. We grinned at him on our last viewing, then noticed a small chill underneath, which is the Calloway and the demon arriving at the same time.
The bounce was learned on stage. Page began in the chorus at the Muny in St. Louis in the early 1970s, reached Broadway in 1976 as Nicely-Nicely Johnson in the all-Black revival of Guys and Dolls, and followed it with the Fats Waller revue Ain't Misbehavin' (1978), the Lion in The Wiz and, in 1982, the original Old Deuteronomy in Cats, a part he played again for the filmed version in 1998. He had chosen theatre over classical singing because he felt nothing for the classical repertoire, and the choice shows in everything he did afterwards: the phrasing comes from Waller and Calloway, not from the conservatoire. His parts tended to be wise, patriarchal or simply large, and his numbers were the ones built to stop a show.
Film never found much use for that. From the 1980s to the 2000s he worked in Los Angeles, and what the screen took from him was mostly the voice: King Gator in All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989), then Oogie Boogie. The live-action parts, Murray in Torch Song Trilogy (1988) and Max Washington in Dreamgirls (2006), were supporting roles, and the camera got his sound and rarely the rest of him. His work with Danny Elfman carried on in concert performances of the Nightmare material long after the film. Around 2010 he went home to St. Louis, became the announcer for the Muny in 2013, and appeared in its productions until 2024, the year he died.
If you want to know what the fuss is about, The Nightmare Before Christmas is the only place to find him on film in a part that uses what he had, and it uses it well. The rest belonged to the stage, and the screen only ever borrowed the voice.
Biography
Ken Page was an American actor and singer. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, on 20 January 1954, he died in the same city on 30 September 2024.
He began his career in the chorus at the Muny in St. Louis before making his Broadway debut as a replacement in the role of the Cowardly Lion in The Wiz (1975). He originated the role of Old Deuteronomy in the original Broadway production of Cats (1982) and appeared in the 1998 filmed version, and created the part of Ken in the original Broadway production of Ain't Misbehavin' (1978).
Page provided the voice of Oogie Boogie in The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and later reprised the role in video games and theme-park attractions. His other screen credits include Torch Song Trilogy (1988), All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989), Dreamgirls (2006) and television appearances in Charmed and Family Matters. He also performed as a cabaret singer.
