David Emge Dies: Zombie Flyboy In Horror Classic ‘Dawn Of The Dead’ Was 77
deadline.comDavid Emge, whose brief acting career included a performance that would become iconic to horror fans – he played the doomed pilot-turned-zombie in George Romero’s 1978 Dawn of the Dead – died January 20 at the West River Health Campus in Evansville, Indiana.
He was 77. His death was announced by his family to the Evansville Courier & Press. A cause of death was not disclosed. Emge began his acting career at the Pittsburgh Playhouse in 1971, landing a small role in the lowbrow 1976 sex comedy The Liberation Of Cherry Jankowski (a.k.a.
The Booby Hatch) before moving first to Washington, D.C., where he performed in dinner theater, and then to New York City, where Romero spotted him working as a chef.
Impressed, Romero cast Emge as helicopter pilot Stephen “Flyboy” Andrews, an accident-prone but well-meaning news pilot who escapes the undead apocalypse to find safety with a few other survivors in a suburban shopping mall.
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