William Ross

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 o