Arguably the most beloved of The Mamas & the Papas, ‘Mama Cass’ Elliot became as famous for rumors surrounding her tragic death at 32 years old as she was for the band’s iconic music in the 1960s.
For nearly five decades, the music world has mourned the loss of “Mama Cass” Elliot, an incredible vocalist and musician who helped define the music of the late 1960s folk-rock era. They’ve also been debating her tragic death at just 32 years old less than a decade later in 1974.
Now, Elliot’s daughter Owen Elliot-Kugell is trying to set the record straight about the most bizarre rumor that’s been circulating now for five decades: that Mama Cass died after choking on a ham sandwich.
Writing in her own memoir, My Mama, Cass, Elliot-Kugell has lived most of her life with fragmented memories of her mother, who died of a heart attack when she was just seven. But those memories have been tainted by years of that one story.
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“In my younger years, when people would talk to me about my mom, it was always about the stupid sandwich,” she told People magazine. “I would go over to kids’ houses after school and eventually one of their parents would ask me ‘Did your mom really die choking on a ham sandwich?'”
Elliot-Kugell marveled at the “chutzpah” it takes to ask a child something like that, though she said “it happened a lot.” She also said that hearing this theory over and over again led to her wanting to get to the bottom of it herself, to “discern faction from fiction,” truth from what has become legend.
As part of her own research, she reached out to one of her mom’s close friend and confidants, former Hollywood Reporter columnist Sue Cameron — who just happened to have written the ham sandwich story into her book, Hollywood Secrets and Scandals.
The genesis of the story, as Cameron told Elliot-Kugell, was when she called to check on her friend and Mama Cass’ manager Allan Carr picked up. According to Cameron, “He was crying and upset and he said, ‘There’s a half-eaten ham sandwich on the nightstand.'”
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She further claims that Carr told her, “You have to do this. Just say she died choking on the sandwich.” Apparently, his hope was that the sandwich story might supersede and offset any other rumors about her death, like any involving drugs.
While drug overdoses were sadly all too prevalent in the music industry of the 1960s and 1970s, Elliot-Kugell says Mama Cass’ system was clean at the time of her death. As for the sandwich story, she thinks that Carr and Cameron “were protecting her legacy. And they were trying to protect me.”
“in a weird way, I’m grateful for that crazy story,” she told the magazine. “As much as it caused me grief, and people made jokes, I now realize it kept her relevant and ready to shine again.”
Elliot-Kugell is hoping to make her mother shine again in the 21st Century with the release of her new book that offers a personal, in-depth exploration of the influential artist, and her mother. My Mama, Cass is on sale May 7.
