Ginger Lynn

One Handed Love Affair

Ginger Lynn: An Appreciation

Written By: Matt Sanborn
Mondo Film & Video Guide Feature Contributor

I’ll never forget the first time I laid eyes upon her.  I was 16 and went to this kid named Tim’s house.  He was a year older than me and took the same bus home from school.  I had snuck a brick of lady finger fire crackers into my duffel bag and he wanted to trade me them for some stroke mags. I thumbed through a bunch of these glossies in his room, most of them brand new and not one page stuck to another.  Although the kid collected them, I doubt he read any.  He was too busy about dreaming of being in the Air Force and watching “Top Gun” over and over again.

The deal looked like it wasn’t going down due to poor quality when he handed me the October 1985 issue of Hustler.  It opened right up to her face. What a face! That blonde gel-waved hair.  That perfect mouth.  And Thor’s Hammer –those eyes!

I threw the firecrackers down, and forsaking the rest of the issues ran from his place to mine about a mile away.  I have no doubt that a world record was set, as my dowser rod lead me as I was but a Six-Million-Dollar-Man blur to any onlookers. But I was home, in my tiny bedroom, and alone with the greatest porn star ever. Ginger Lynn.

She has been in my heart, VCR, and, mostly, my loins since then – A career thrilling people all over the world.  But I don’t care about those people, I care about me, and although you should never meet your heroes, I tried my best. While writing for the underground mag “Angry Youth Comix” in the early 1990s I was on a roll.  I had interviewed Asia Carrera, Tiffany Million, Jenteal, met and kissed Jeanna Fine.  There was only one thing left to do – meet Ginger.  Sadly, she has more layers of security around her than the President and Pope combined.  I don’t blame her, you can only imagine how many people there are out there with the same lust, but with nothing but bad intentions.  “I painted this picture of you and me together Miss Lynn…”

But Ginger, I don’t have those bad intentions, just love in my naughty place for you as I lay out your story, as you laid out so many men and women in the business over your career. And what a career she has had; with highs from making thousands of dollars a day to ball on film to going so low as to land in prison.

Ginger first hit the main stream porn scene in the early 1980s performing with the overrated Jerry Butler.  In Butler’s self-pitying autobiography “Raw Talent” he claims to have fallen in love with Lynn and proposed to her with a diamond engagement ring.  They were to be married shortly thereafter.

That was until he spied his fiancé sucking Ron Jeremy’s cock on a beach hours after the proposal. And it is Jeremy that she did her first scene with, in an ultra rare 8 mm loop of unknown title. Heart broken, Butler returned to overacting and cocaine, as Lynn continued to steam roll through the porn world, fighting and fisting her way to the top spot in the business by the mid 1980s.

She worked with John Holmes, the moody Harry Reems, the late Jamie Gillis, and perhaps did her best work with the always dependable Peter North and Tom Byron.  She did some great work with Christy Canyon and Amber Lynn, (no relation), and commanded thousands of dollars a day.    She also claimed Holmes was one of the “Sweetest, nicest, people I ever met… It was easier to deliver my baby then to fuck John.  But we had passion.  I loved John.”  Loved him despite the fact he had sex on camera while knowing he was HIV positive, set up a five person murder, beat and pimped out a 15 year old girl, muled money and drugs for the mob, etc.  (But hey, no one is perfect).

She quickly became the biggest thing porn had perhaps ever seen. Her films were huge sellers and included, “Club Ginger” (1986), “Ball Busters” (1984), “I Dream of Ginger” (1985), and the all time classic “New Wave Hookers” (1985), with the under-age Traci Lords.  She also piled up the awards, winning XRCO’s Starlet of the Year, Video Vixen and Female Performer of the Year in 1984, in 1985 won Best New Starlet, and several Best Sex Scenes in the mid-Eighties.  She would also enter the AVN Hall of Fame, Legends of Erotica Hall of Fame and the XRCO Hall of Fame.

As revered as she was becoming the seeds of her undoing were being planted.  Lynn had developed an adversarial relationship with Traci Lords shortly after meeting her, and was developing a taste for cocaine.  These two forces clashed and Ginger, sadly, ended up on the wrong side of things.

In May of 1986 Traci Lords, emaciated from her own coke abuse, admitted to being under-aged when filming some of her movies.  Film makers and producers were sent into a panic, and video stores, (remember those?), went running to pull Lords’ flicks off of the shelves, (and usually into their own hidden collections).

The Feds wanted Lynn to play ball with them in the prosecution of certain movie makers for producing child pornography starring the firm-chested, adult looking Lords.  Lynn refused their offer to testify on Lords’ behalf, and here her troubles really started. Soon thereafter Lynn was arrested by the IRS for falsifying a tax return on pennies compared to what she had been paying, and was brought to trial.  She was found guilty, and placed on probation.  However, a drug test while on the probation came up dirty, and into the big house she was sent.

Ginger in 'New Wave Hookers'

Lynn spent several months in the federal lockup.  After her release, she returned to the small screen, starring in a fistful more of movies before retiring from adult films for the first time.

With her devious nemesis Lords making headway into mainstream entertainment with a role in John Waters’ “Cry Baby,” Lynn went to give it a shot herself.  It was not as easy for Ginger as it had been for Traci.  Lords had been dating Waters’ close friend Divine’s cousin, and was able to gain an in to the infamous director.  The former legend had to go it alone with no contacts, finding bit parts and finally getting a decent role in the low budget comedy “Vice Academy” (1989), and its two sequels.  She got another choice role in “Bound and Gagged a Love Story” (1992), where she does some bandage scenes.  There were also a cameos in “The Devil’s Rejects” and “American Pie Presents Band Camp.”

She seems to have made the mistake that many adult film actresses make, and dated Charlie Sheen for a while.  Sheen jettisoned Lynn stating she was not good for his image…  Sheen also became angered that Lynn allowed Howard Stern to spank her on his radio program.  (Let’s face facts, it was a good thing for her safety and sanity that she got away from creepy, number one on most people’s Death Pool Sheen when she did).

Lynn then was a finalist for the female lead in Martin Scorsese’s “Casino.”  Although the director wanted her, studio know-it-alls insisted on the talentless Sharon Stone to take the part.  One can only imagine what this role would have done for Lynn’s career. Settling down into a more domesticated life she had a child, taking small roles in and perhaps most famously appeared in the Metallica video “Turn the Page.”  She also amassed a huge collection of Troll dolls along the way.

Ginger Lynn in 'Dr. Alien' aka I Was A Teenage Sex Mutant

But you can’t keep a good woman down.  Always giving her public what they wanted, she returned to adult films in 2010 starring in “Saw: A Hardcore Parody.”  Ginger stated shortly thereafter she had developed a distaste for these films as they were no longer about sex, but fame and money.  So, in her own words, she “hung up her pussy,” and went quietly into the good night once again.

Now approaching fifty, she is a living legend and arguably the top female adult film star of all time.  She did a total of 266 porns, 69 in her first two years, and directed one.  Who can you argue was better?

Nina Hartley, Marilyn Chambers, Kay Parker and Christy Canyon might be the only ones a true case can be made for being her equal.  But Ginger, the natural beauty from Rockford Illinois, is still the tops to most hard core, one fisted aficionados. But as long as there are still those old mags out there young men, and some women, will break new speed records to get home and spend time alone, thinking of only one thing. Ginger.

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