William Ross

Biography

Ross was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S. on September 7, 1923. He was drafted into the Korean War, and would be stationed in Japan, where he fell in love with the country. Ross would subsequently move to Tokyo with intentions of joining the Japanese State Department. Instead, he ended up becoming involved in the film industry, and would go on to appear in more than 80 Japanese films and Television shows.

In 1959, Ross got into the dubbing industry upon recommendation by Japanese actor So Yamamura. He showed such a talent for the industry, that the Japanese dubbing director quit and left Ross in charge on the first day. Soon thereafter, he would hired as a director by Asian Films.

After the closure of several Tokyo dubbing studios in 1964, he founded his own dubbing company, Frontier Enterprises, also working as dialogue writer, dubbing director and voice actor. Frontier quickly became one of the big five early English dubbing houses, doing work for companies such as Toho, Toei and Shochiku. Frontier would go on to dub over 465 live-action and animated films and TV series.

Ross was forced to rely on whatever native English speakers he could find in Tokyo back in the 1960's; much of which consisted of businessmen, musicians and students with little to no acting experience. He held auditions and made sure he hired the best people available, and trained them thoroughly. His regular dubbing cast primarily consisted of expatriates living in Tokyo and members of the Far East Network, however.

Aside from his dubbing ventures, Ross was an associate producer on Toei's Terror Beneath the Sea and the MGM-Toei coproduction The Green Slime (where he was also an assistant director to Kinji Fukusaku and appeared as Ferguson). He continued to act occasionally, appearing in Message from Space, The Last Dinosaur and The War in Space. Ross was also a dialogue editor, notably editing for American animated shows such as Dennis the Menace, Heathcliff & the Cadillac Cats and The Real Ghostbusters.

Ross died in Tokyo on April 19, 2014.