Ella Mae Smith, who played one of the flesh-eating zombies in Night of the Living Dead, passed away yesterday at the age of 93.
A lifelong resident of Evans City, PA, she and her husband, Philip Smith, lived in a home right in front of the farmhouse where the movie was filmed. They were sitting in the front yard one day when a car pulled up and asked them if they wanted to be in a movie. Ella Mae persuaded Philip, and they both appeared as ghouls.
40 years after her lone acting role, Smith was interviewed in the documentary One for the Fire: The Legacy of Night of the Living Dead. She also appeared in the doc Autopsy of the Dead and the featurette Walking Like the Dead.
The official Night of the Living Dead Facebook wrote, “For at least the past 20 years, Ella Mae Smith has been the beloved local ambassador to Night of the Living Dead, always making time to meet with visiting fans and escort them around her property and the adjacent filming location where the farmhouse originally stood.”
“You wouldn’t believe how many people stop here at my house and ask me where this movie was made. And I tell them, and I tell them that I was in it and everything, and we have lots of fun about it,” Smith said in One for the Fire. “I didn’t make much money, but I had a million dollars worth of fun out of this movie.”
Photo courtesy of Image Ten, Inc.
