Tony Jay - Biography

Tony Jay (February 2, 1933 – August 13, 2006) was an English actor, voice actor and singer. A former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, he was known for his voice work in animation, film and computer games. Jay's distinctive baritone voice often landed him villainous roles. He is best known as the voice of Claude Frollo in Walt Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Shere Khan in The Jungle Book 2, The Chief in the Super Secret Secret Squirrel segment of 2 Stupid Dogs, Galactus and Terrax in The Fantastic Four, Chairface Chippendale in The Tick, Anubis in Gargoyles, Magneto in X-Men Legends, The Narrator in Skeleton Warriors, and the virus Megabyte in the award-winning CG-I animated series ReBoot.

Career

Jay appeared on-screen in several movies and on television, including Love and Death, Twins, Night Court and Eerie, Indiana. He also developed a career in the theatre, in plays such as The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Great Expectations, and The Merchant of Venice. Jay's other non-animation roles included Paracelsus on the 1987 CBS series Beauty and the Beast; Minister Campio on Star Trek: The Next Generation; and Lex Luthor's villainous aide-de-camp Nigel St. John in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.

He was also well known for his role as the voice of the virus Megabyte in the award-winning 3-D animated series ReBoot, and for his voice work as Judge Claude Frollo in Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame and in the Walt Disney World version of the nighttime light and fireworks show Fantasmic!. He also voiced Monsieur D'Arque, the amoral asylum superintendent, in Disney's Beauty and the Beast.

He is also well-known among Legacy of Kain fans for his voicing of the original Mortanius and of the Elder God, alongside several other minor characters. He was also the successor of George Sanders in the role of Shere Khan the tiger as he voiced the character in Tale Spin and reprised his role of the character for fifteen years after it ended until his death. The Jungle Book 2 was his final reprisal of the role.

Jay was a devotee of classic Broadway, and made several recordings and performances of old-time Broadway lyrics, in spoken-word form. A CD of these readings, Speaking of Broadway, was released in 2005; a version recorded years earlier of the same collection was titled Poets on Broadway, as is his website. It features Jay reciting lyrics written by the likes of Noel Coward, Ira Gershwin, and Oscar Hammerstein, and was composed entirely by him, according to the CD liner notes.

Personal life

Jay was born in London, England in 1933. He attended Pinner County Grammar School. He moved to South Africa in 1966 and was involved with many radio productions on the SABC Commercial Radio Service, Springbok Radio, until 1980. He later moved to the United States, and became a naturalized citizen. He was Jewish.

Death

In April 2006 he underwent surgery in Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles to remove a non-cancerous tumor from his lungs. He never recovered fully from the operation and was in critical condition throughout the following months, until his death at the hospital on August 13, 2006, at the age of 73. He is interred at Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery.

Legacy

Jay was survived by his wife Marta and his son Adam.

Notable voice roles

Notable characters Tony Jay voiced include:

Film

• Voice of the Supreme Being in Time Bandits
• Mac McHale Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers
• Monsieur D'arque, the asylum owner, in Beauty and the Beast
• Lickboot the lawyer in Tom and Jerry: The Movie
• Judge Claude Frollo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Jay also does his character's singing; see Hellfire) (in this role he was also nominated for an Annie Award for Outstanding Achievement in Voice Acting)
• Dr. Rosenthal in Recess: School's Out
• Reginald in All Dogs Go to Heaven 2
• Shere Khan in The Jungle Book 2, and the same character in TaleSpin and Disney's House of Mouse
• Narrator in Treasure Planet
• Cow in Thumbelina (Uncredited)
• Toplofty in An American Tail: The Treasure of Manhattan Island
• Narrator in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
• Council Chief in My Stepmother Is an Alien

Television

• The Chief in 2 Stupid Dogs
• Announcer/Introduction of the Ancient Prophecies specials hosted by David McCallum on NBC in the mid 1990s.
• Hungarian sculptor Laszlo in The Golden Girls
• Nigel St. John in Lois & Clark
• Dougie Milford in Twin Peaks
• Edward F. Furrow in Garfield and Friends
• Shere Khan in Tale Spin
• Alf Mason in Peter Pan and the Pirates
• Ceronomus the wizard for the attraction Caesar's Magical Empire
• The Magical Wishing Starfish in The Little Mermaid
• Chairface Chippendale in The Tick
• Watson in Beethoven
• Paracelsus in Beauty and the Beast
• Megabyte in ReBoot
• Galactus and Terrax in The Fantastic Four
• Anubis in Gargoyles
• Boris Von Orloff in Eerie, Indiana
• Jarlsberg in Bruno the Kid
• The Wraith in Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series
• Death in Darkwing Duck
• Dr. Animus in Buzz Lightyear of Star Command.
• Baron Mordo in Spider-Man: The Animated Series
• Lord Dregg, the main villain of the final two seasons of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
• Virgil the Lemurian in Mighty Max
• Sul-Van in Superman: The Animated Series
• Dr. Lipschitz in Rugrats, as well as several other one-shot characters on that show
• The Chief in the 1993 revival of Secret Squirrel
• Spiderus in Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends (Note: This was Jay's final role before his death.)
• Narrated Skeleton Warriors cartoon series
• Rex Smythe Higgens the 1st and a disembodied godlike voice in Hey Arnold!
• Jeeves "Evil" Weevil in Courage the Cowardly Dog
• Shere Khan, Magic Mirror, and Ostrich on House of Mouse
• Mechestro in Xyber 9
• Jaggo Donut in an episode of Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat
• The talking yeti in Captain Planet
• September 1995: Khartoum in the Aladdin TV series in the 81st episode "The Book of Khartoum".

Video games

• September 1992: Captain Saladin, ArchDruid, Gate, and Lamp Trader in King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow
• November 1996: Mortanius the Necromancer in Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain

• The Elder God in the Legacy of Kain series
• Zephon in Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver

• November 1997: Lieutenant in Fallout

• January 2004: General Attis in Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel

• February 1998 The Sorcerer in Die by the Sword (1998 computer game)
• December 1999 The Transcendent One in Planescape: Torment
• March 2000: Shere Khan in The Jungle Book Groove Party
• June 2000: Kresselack in Icewind Dale
• November 2000: Mithras in Sacrifice
• November 2001: The Director in Return to Castle Wolfenstein
• December 2001: Xantam the Beholder in Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance
• March 2003: Chancellor Florian Gustov Niemann in Freelancer
• December 2003: King Forge in Armed and Dangerous (video game)
• January 2004: Leader of the Rangers in Mace Griffin: Bounty Hunter
• February 2004: Innoruuk in Champions of Norrath
• September 2004: Magneto in X-Men Legends
• October 2004: The Narrator in The Bard's Tale (2004)

Narration

Notable projects for which Tony Jay provided narrationinclude:

• Albert Fish, a 2006 film
• Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
• The Bard's Tale
• The History Channel series Civil War Combat
• Dark Age of Camelot, a MMORPG set in Arthurian times.
• Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel
• Hunter: The Reckoning
• Inside a Death Camp: The Sobibor Story, a 2005 TV documentary about the Sobibór Nazi death camp
• Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
• Skeleton Warriors
• Teen Titans (in the episode Transformation)
• Treasure Planet
• Twins
• H. H. Holmes: America's First Serial Killer, a 2004 documentary on the notorious Herman Webster Mudgett
• Blackstone audiobooks unabridged presentation of Horace Walpole's classic Gothic Romance "The Castle of Otranto"' and audio adaptation of "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari".

Voice-overs

Notable projects for which Tony Jay narrated include:

• LBC Radio (London), Tony Jay narrated voice-overs for the station's main jingle packages between 1974 and 1980.
• SPRINGBOK RADIO (South Africa), Tony Jay acted, wrote & produced many radio series' in South Africa on the Commercial Radio Service, Springbok Radio.

Programmes include: Taxi (Starred as one of the main lead's Red Kowalski, also wrote several episodes) The Sounds of Darkness (Starred as the main lead, Lee Masters)

External links

• Special Springbok Radio Audio Tribute