Ken Page, the Broadway actor whose extensive career included standout roles in “The Wiz” and “Cats,” but whose rich baritone voice reached a wider audience as Oogie Boogie in the perennial hit movie “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” died on Monday at his home in St. Louis. He was 70.

His death was confirmed by his longtime friend Dorian Hannaway on Tuesday. She did not cite a cause.

Mr. Page, a St. Louis native, burst onto the New York theater scene in 1975 as a replacement actor for the Lion in “The Wiz,” but it was his showstopping rendition of “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat” as Nicely-Nicely Johnson in the “Guys and Dolls” revival the next year that first drew acclaim.

“Sometimes it really does happen. Sometimes the fairy tale comes true,” The New York Times wrote in 1976. “It happened on Wednesday night at the Broadway Theater to a young unknown, Ken Page.”

He was in the original Broadway productions of “Cats,” as the dignified Old Deuteronomy, and “Ain’t Misbehavin,’” among many other theater credits. Offstage, he was probably best known for voicing the infamous boogeyman in Henry Selick and Tim Burton’s 1993 stop motion classic, “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” Oogie Boogie. It was a role that Mr. Page would revisit often in video games and Halloween celebrations.