"Mama" Cass Elliot had a stunning voice and a lifelong struggle with her weight.
Guess which one people wanted to talk about? The one that killed her at the age of 33.
Cass Elliot was a unique child. According to The Guardian, she once explained,
"I've been fat since I was seven, and being fat sets you apart."
But with a deep love of music and performing fueling her,
Elliot turned what most saw as a handicap into a strength, at least outwardly.
Elliot grew up in Baltimore, where her parents worked at an ice cream
fountain and ran a lunch wagon. They loved opera, and Elliot's mother,
who was once a professional singer, played piano. As a kid, Elliot took piano lessons
and learned to play guitar. In high school, she sang in the choir and appeared in school plays.
"Cass was a star. She was a star from the time
she was two years old. She'd be entertaining on the bus."
After high school, Elliot went to New York to act in musicals, but when she lost a big job
to another rising star, Barbra Streisand, she decided to pursue a singing career.
Elliot oozed style. According to Rolling Stone, her former manager, Bobby Roberts, remembered,
"She was overweight, but she carried it off like she was a beauty queen."
Inside, however, Elliot was uncomfortable with her appearance.
"She always seemed to go for the guy that didn't quite want her. Almost as
if to confirm this idea that she had of herself."
In 1969, she wrote a revealing article for Good Housekeeping confessing that
her weight "was an excuse so that [she] wouldn't have to compete with other women."
Cass Elliot was playing with folk-rock band The Mugwumps where she met fellow musician
Denny Doherty. She was attracted to Doherty, but he claimed he "couldn't deal with the weight."
"She's madly in love with Denny all of her life.
From the time she met him. She just absolutely adored Denny."
However, he did introduce Cass to John and Michelle Phillips.
The three were forming a band, and Elliot asked to join. The problem was nobody could
picture someone of Elliot's size performing next to the petite Phillips. John Phillips
in particular believed Elliot's appearance "would turn off audiences." But that didn't
stop Elliot. She was determined to join the band and followed them wherever they went.
Elliot was willing to do anything,
from waitressing at the nightclub where they were playing –
"She was a horrible waitress."
… To rehearsing with them while they were on break. Michelle recalled to Rolling Stone,
"We'd say, 'OK, Cass, serve some f-----g drinks, we're going onstage.'"
"And she swallowed a lot of pride and a lot of
hurt feelings and a lot of rejection. Yeah. And she stayed."
When the band was kicked off of St. Thomas for drugging, they wound up with no money
and showed up at Elliot's Los Angeles home. Only then was she allowed to join the group.
They became The Mamas and the Papas, and she became known as Mama Cass.
Cass Elliot had followed the band to St. Thomas where,
according to John Phillips, she got hit on the head by a falling pipe.
"It was a mild concussion. You know. Not severe but moderate, I would say. A moderate concussion."
Phillips claimed the injury expanded her range, allowing her to suddenly
hit higher notes. Not true. Or even possible. Why would John make that up?
Michelle's brother, Russell Gilliam, believed John didn't want the public
to know Elliot had been forced to trek after the band for a year in hopes they
would hire her. Nor did he want it known that he told powerhouse Elliot she was too "fat" to
sing with them. Elliot went along with the story to save face. She told Rolling Stone,
"I had a concussion and went to the hospital. I had a bad headache for about two weeks,
and all of a sudden, I was singing higher. It's true. Honest to god."
The Mamas and the Papas were typical musicians of the 1960s. John Phillips told Rolling Stone,
"The first acid trip any of us ever took, we took together."
It wouldn't be the last. Michelle Phillips recalled one working trip
to the Virgin Islands. She told the Baltimore Sun that
the group had "limited their drug use to psychedelics and alcohol."
"There was no cocaine around. Thank God. We would have gotten nothing done."
As reported by The Atlantic, an interviewer wrote,
"Before they hit the big time, the group dropped acid, smoked dope,
and drank. After they hit the big time, the group dropped acid, smoked dope, and drank."
There were also heartbreaks. Michelle messed around with Denny Doherty,
which didn't sit well with Elliot. She confronted Michelle.
"She said to me, 'You can have any man that you want. Why take the man that I love?"
Somehow, Cass was able to forgive her bandmate. Michelle would eventually have affairs with
Gene Clark of The Byrds, as well as "all of John's best friends," according to Vanity Fair.
Cass Elliot's love life was problematic. Not only
did Denny Doherty spurn her advances. So did a drug smuggler named Pic Dawson,
who claimed to fear that if he got involved with Elliot, he'd cheat on her.
In 1967, Elliot was arrested. Upon the band's arrival in London, she was charged
with skipping out on a hotel bill and stealing a set of sheets during a previous visit. But
there was more to the story. According to Musicoholics, U.K. police were concerned
about Elliot's relationship with Pic Dawson. Luckily, the band got wind of the impending
arrest and dumped their drugs. Elliot spent a night in jail but the charges were dropped.
Cass Elliot's first husband was guitarist and former bandmate Jim Hendricks. They married in
1963 and split by '67. Later that year, Elliot gave birth to her only child, daughter Owen.
She kept both her pregnancy and the name of Owen's father a secret.
In an interview with Next Tribe, Owen said,
"She wanted me more than anything else in the world — she told people that. … She named me Owen
because I was her own. She was responsible for one hundred percent of my welfare."
"Are you a good mother?"
"Oh, yes. Is that proper to say?"
Elliot remained close to her daughter and was uneasy when Owen got too close to her
nannies. When Elliot died, Owen was just seven. Elliot's sister,
Leah Kunkel, took in her niece and raised her.
By 1968, John and Michelle's marriage was falling apart,
and Cass worried the band was losing focus. John Phillips admitted to Rolling Stone:
"Cass's idea of show business was really show business. We
just wanted to f---- around, have a good time."
The band assured viewers on The Ed Sullivan Show
that they weren't breaking up, but the group was done.
For Elliot, it was a new beginning. She told Rolling Stone about the artists
who hung out at her house on any given day, including Eric Clapton,
David Crosby, Joni Mitchell, and Stephen Stills. She said,
"Music happens in my house and that pleases me."
"My mom's home was really the center of a lot of happenings in Laurel Canyon."
Soon, a tragedy would throw her into the spotlight in a terrible way.
In 1969, Charles Manson and his followers notoriously murdered pregnant actress Sharon
Tate and her friends in Los Angeles. It was soon revealed that Manson's party circuit had
previously included Cass Elliot's home. Manson had "attended at least one of" Elliot's popular
celebrity parties. And Manson's bus was frequently seen parked at John and Michelle Phillips' house.
Tate was friends with both Elliot and Michelle, and, according to The Atlantic,
Denny Doherty had planned to go Tate's house the night of the murders but didn't make it.
John Phillips blamed Elliot for the tragedy. In his book about Sharon Tate,
Ed Sanders quotes Elliot as saying,
"John blamed me for bringing killers into our group, blamed me for Sharon's death,
and said police were going to arrest me as an accomplice."
Not only that, he convinced her she would be murdered next.
Police got wind of this during their investigation. In 1970,
the San Antonio Express reported that both Elliot and John Phillips were subpoenaed to
testify in Manson's defense. They never appeared to have been summoned, however.
Cass Elliot had a taste of solo stardom with her 1968 hit, "Dream A Little Dream
Of Me." Her solo album of the same name secured her a three-week booking at Caesars
Palace in Las Vegas. Elliot's contract stipulated she be allowed to bring Owen,
but dividing time between Owen and rehearsals was grueling. By the time she took the stage
on opening night, with Sammy Davis Jr. and Jimi Hendrix in the audience,
Elliot had a raging fever. Her show closed after just two performances.
In 1969, Elliot released her next album, Bubblegum, Lemonade and ... Something for
Mama. But she struggled to overcome the stigma of being a single mother. She recorded a reunion
album with The Mamas and The Papas, but when it fell flat, Elliot left the band behind forever.
In 1971, she married Baron Donald von Wiedenman. They were divorced by the end of the year.
According to Encyclopedia, Cass Elliot once said of her weight,
"I simply learned that's the way I am and so I live with it."
But in 1969, she went on a seven-month long crash diet that consisted of fasting four days a week.
It gave her "acute tonsillitis, hemorrhaging vocal cords,
mononucleosis and a dangerous case of hepatitis" that cost her over $250,000 in lost earnings.
Elliot also grappled with the infamous "Mama Cass" nickname she'd earned with The
Mamas and The Papas. In a 1973 Tonight Show appearance, she announced that her upcoming
television special and next album would both be titled: Don't Call Me Mama Anymore.
"I would like to, you know, to have a last name like a real person."
Elliot continued to diet to such an extent that she passed out backstage
before another Tonight Show appearance. On an appearance on The Mike Douglas Show,
Cass explained that she hadn't eaten all day prior to Johnny Carson.
"I had the vapors. Remember in the old days,
people used to get the vapors and take to their beds with a compress."
Douglas then coerced into talking about her love for Tastykake cupcakes.
"This is the continuing dramatic saga of Cass Elliot and the giant
Tastykake that devoured the Hollywood Hills."
On July 30, 1974, Cass Elliot died following a concert in London. Her
secretary, Dot McLeod, found the star "propped up in her double bed" where she
was staying. McLeod claimed a ham sandwich lay nearby. Newspapers amplified the story,
reporting that the singer had choked on the sandwich.
"It's, you know, gravy for the media to go, 'Oh, look, the fat lady died of eating.'"
Other bizarre stories about Elliot's death involved an FBI plot, choking on her own vomit,
and death during childbirth while having the lovechild of John Lennon.
In reality, the post-mortem pathology confirmed that there were no drugs or alcohol in the
singer's system, and that she had apparently eaten very little during her last hours. As
the world wondered what happened, Elliot's body was shipped back to California. She was buried in
Mount Sinai Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills with her family, including Owen, in attendance.
When she died on July 30, 1974, Elliot had just finished a two-week stint at the London
Palladium. On Sunday, July 28, she went to a party hosted by Mick Jagger but didn't drink
and left early. The apartment she was staying in was owned by singer Harry Nilsson. Also
staying there was Elliot's road manager, George Caldwell. Several people had been in and out of
the apartment during the day on July 29, but they all assumed Elliot was sleeping.
Sue Cameron, then working for The Hollywood Reporter, told People that she called Elliot's
apartment upon hearing news of her death. The phone was answered by the singer's manager,
Allan Carr, who frantically instructed Cameron to write that Elliot died by choking on the
ham sandwich sitting on the nightstand. In truth, the official autopsy report revealed
that Elliot had actually died from "fatty myocardial degeneration due to obesity."
Carr, however, thanked Cameron for writing the sandwich story. He explained,
"I was trying to save her reputation."
"I would say that the world's
in terrible shape, but I'm afraid the world would say, 'Look who's talking.'"
The ham sandwich story became the lie that wouldn't die. As
recently as 2020, Cameron told People,
"I never thought it would last as long as it has."
In 2022, Owen recalled watching old videos of her mother. She told Next
Tribe how she used to cringe with pain seeing people make what were supposed
to be friendly overweight "jokes" about her mom, right to her face.
In 2011, Elliot's brother and sister, Joseph Cohen and Leah Kunkel, filed suit against the singer's
estate, which had been awarded to Owen. At issue was Elliot's will, allegedly drawn up in 1967,
then suppressed after her death in '74 by the law firm of Mitchell, Silberberg & Knupp. The firm was
accused of telling Elliot's mother, Bess Cohen, that there was no will, and failing to reveal
that it "had a legal relationship with the bank that was the largest claimant to the estate."