Some sad news crossed the Mr. Pink’s desk this week, concerning the apparent loss of another porn heroine of the Golden Age, Kandi Barbour. Star of such XXX films as The Pink Ladies (1980), Bon Appetit (’80), California Gigolo (’79), and Screwples (’79), Barbour (real name Linda Jean Smith) amassed a small but impressive filmography over her nine years as an adult performer, leading her to be inducted into the XRCO Hall of Fame in 2009. To the surprise of many people in porn, the native Kansan was sadly found dead in San Francisco on Thursday January 26th, another victim of the city’s immense homeless problem.
As Golden Age director Carter Stevens recalled to AVN, the last time he had any knowledge of Barbour’s whereabouts and health was 22 years ago when his wife saw her in Hawaii. “She was living above the club [Club Hubba Hubba] and working there… she had a drinking problem. She had gained a lot of weight and was living in a muumuu and never took it off. She did has some mental problems, even at that point.” Suffering from a dysmorphic body image, Barbour believed her nose to be crooked – it wasn’t – and often spoke of having it “fixed.” Very little information about her life between that time and the discovery of her body on a San Francisco street. She was 55-years-old.
Sadly, like so many performers who came both before and after Barbour, she may largely be remembered by her rather modest entry at Wikipedia: “Kandi Barbour was a former American adult models, pornstar and exotic dancer.”
