Linda Wong

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Linda Wong

Birthdate	September 13, 1951
Birth location	San Francisco, California, USA
Date of death	December 17, 1987 (aged 36)
Ethnicity	Japanese
Alias(es)	Sandy Stram, Linda Chang, Linda Wong
No. of films	48 (per IAFD)
Linda Wong at IMDb
Linda Wong at IAFD
Linda Wong at AFDB

Linda Wong (September 13, 1951 – December 17, 1987) was a pornographic actress and one of the first Asians to become a star in the adult film industry. ^[1] In 1998, Wong was added to XRCO Hall of Fame.^[2]

Career

Linda Wong was born in Hawaii and raised in San Francisco (first in Mill Valley and later in San Bruno). She lived in Richmond and graduated in 1969 from JFK High School in Richmond. Shortly after graduation Linda married and her last name became "Ching". Linda herself was Japanese, not Chinese. After a few years, she divorced but kept her married surname. Linda worked for short period of time as a teller for Sumitomo Bank and as a receptionist for Melvin Belli. She then started to dance on Broadway. She first broke into the business in 1976 with the films Oriental Babysitter and Jade Pussycat, in which she co-starred with Georgina Spelvin and John Holmes.

According to Playboy's October 1977 pictorial "Ladies of Joy" and Playboy's 1980 Girls of Playboy 4, she worked as a legal prostitute in Las Vegas for a short time under the name "Linda Ching".

Appearing in adult films disturbed Wong. She once said

"I was never viewed as a human being. The greatest compliment that anyone has given me is that 'Linda, you're a nice person.' Most people, right off the bat, assume that I am a piece of meat, a porno star, a floozy." (AVN)

In 1981, she decided to retire. She returned four years later, to star in The Erotic World of Linda Wong. She was planning yet another comeback in 1987 when she died of a drug overdose.^{[citation needed]}

Death

At the time of her death, she was out on bond and awaiting trial on charges stemming from an attempt to buy codeine with a forged prescription. She faced a prison sentence of more than a year. She died of an overdose resulting from Xanax, chloral hydrate and alcohol.

Linda's husband Richard Olson writes about her death,

"Linda died December 17, 1987 in Petaluma, California. I was with her at the time. She died of an overdose resulting from Zanax, chlorylhydrate [referred to as a mickey, like a quaalude] and alcohol. Considering we'd been living together in excess of 2 years, I'd have to say that her death was NOT intentional...
...She was a drug addict. I didn't use heroin until I met her, and I got f---ed up during our relationship as well. She was mad at the world. I am not an abuser and never have been, and in all honesty, I think that Linda missed that in our relationship. I would never get physical with her. She swung at me many times. Bill Amerson warned me about staying with her... At one point he said, 'if you stick with her, you can't work for me, because I can't trust you.'...I eventually moved up to Northern California [summer of 1987] hoping that a change of location would help with my drug problem. Linda got arrested for trying to pick up a prescription for codeine that she wrote herself. She spent two months in jail. They dug into her record and found an old possession [of narcotics] charge and they were going to keep her in for a year or so... I wired her attorney some money and got her out on a bond. She came up to me in Northern California and three weeks later she overdosed...She wasn't using heroin. She was popping pills, Xanax and Chlorylhydrate, what used to be called a mickey. Like a quaalude. They never did anything for me. She used to eat them by the handful. She took more drugs than any girl I've been with...I was at work. I got off at noon and I came home to our hotel. The manager said that my wife had been found passed out on the floor and that she was in the hospital. She was conscious and claimed she was fine when I picked her up [at the hospital]. I had to leave and run some errands. She was fine when I left and when I came back she was still fine and wanted to go to dinner... ...So we went to a restaurant in Petaluma. She went off to the bathroom and that was the last I saw her alive. Somebody came running out of the bathroom saying that there was a woman on the floor. I just knew it was her."^{[cite this quote]}

Partial filmography

• Oriental Babysitter (1976)
• China Lust (1976)
• China DeSade (1977)
• Babyface (1977)
• Stormy (1980)
• Swedish Erotica 10 (1981)
• The Erotic World Of Linda Wong (1985)

References