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 casts 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
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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 1976 revival of the beloved 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.
Just two years after his arrival in New York, he made his Broadway debut in the 1976 revival of Guys And Dolls; he is pictured (right) in the show with Christophe Pierre (left)
