The Guardian: ‘The truth was just too painful’– the highs and lows of Mama Cass

The daughter of ‘Mama’ Cass Elliot has written a book to explore the tragically short life of her mother, from relentless fat-shaming to a myth about her death

One of the most famous stories ever told about “Mama” Cass Elliot was a complete lie. It didn’t help that the singer herself repeated it in scores of interviews. As the spiel goes, Cass became the last singer hired for the Mamas and Papas only after she got smacked on the head by a pipe during a construction project at a local club where they all hung out. “It’s true,” she insisted to Rolling Stone in 1968. “I had a concussion and went to the hospital. I had a bad headache for about two weeks and then, all of a sudden, I was singing higher.”

The “new” sound she supposedly produced was what allegedly convinced group’s leader John Phillips to finally bring her into the fold, creating what became one of the most famous four-way harmony groups in pop history. In fact, the real reason Phillips didn’t initially want to hire the clearly gifted Cass was simply because he thought she was too overweight to be part of a viable pop group. “The fact that she felt she had to perpetuate a false story shows the depth of what she felt she had to hide,” said Owen Elliot-Kugell, the singer’s daughter who has written a new book titled My Mama, Cass. “The truth was just too painful.”

Even with that cover story to shield her, Cass experienced relentless fat-shaming throughout the group’s career, highlighted by the main refrain in their seminal hit Creeque Alley that read “no one’s getting fat except Mama Cass”. The snarky references continued into their legacy years when, in an acceptance speech for their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, fellow “Mama” Michelle Phillips said: “I have personal knowledge that Cass is looking down on these proceedings wearing a size six Thierry Mugler dress.” The swipes about her weight even played into a widely believed, but false, story about the cause of her death. (The infamous choking-on-a-ham-sandwich bit.) The poignancy of it all forms a central motif in Elliot-Kugell’s book though it doesn’t overwhelm the main reason we care to begin with. The book also celebrates the singularity of Cass’s singing, the range of her creative talent, and the warmth of her character. The primary inspiration for writing the book came from a foundational trauma: Elliot-Kugell was only seven when her mother died. “When you lose somebody that young, they become a mystery to you,” she said. “Writing the book allowed me to put the pieces of the puzzle of my mom together in a way I hadn’t previously been able to do.”

Elliot-Kugell, now 57, began thinking about writing a book about her mother nearly two decades ago but, because her own experience with her was scant, she had to go on an extended journalistic mission to mine the memories of people with a far greater understanding of her life and history. “I was always asking people about her,” she said. “This book is a compilation of everything I’ve been told over the years.”

The result strikes her as especially relevant today. “My mom was a forward-thinking woman-of-size who made it in an industry that was largely controlled by men,” she said. “That makes her story timely.”

Because her story ended too soon it gains special pain as well. “My mom was just 32 when she passed,” Elliot-Kugell said. “She didn’t live long enough to write a memoir that would have her side represented. I did this because she didn’t get the chance to.”

What she uncovered was a life in which others often set the agenda, and framed the narrative, for her mother. When Cass was just a girl, she contracted ringworm, a highly contagious disease. Because her mother was pregnant at the time, the family sent her to live temporarily with her grandmother, a product of the Depression who viewed food as both a cure-all and a source of love. “They fed her like crazy,” Elliot-Kugell said. “When my mom came home a couple of months later she was heavier and her parents became concerned. They did what they knew how to do, which was to send her to a doctor. And he did what he knew how to do, which was to put her on amphetamines.

“She was just eight!” the author exclaimed. “What does being on amphetamines do to a child’s developing brain? It’s not only altering chemically what’s going on, it’s sending a horrible message that there’s something wrong with you. And this pill will fix it.”

A bright spot in Cass’s early life was music. Even as a child, she had a voice that stood out, as well as an interest in acting that she avidly pursued in high school theatrical productions. Even there, she experienced judgment for her size. While behind the scenes she taught the other kids how to sing, dance and present themselves, she never appeared onstage herself. “She knew that other people were going to judge her for her looks,” Elliot-Kugell said. “I feel terrible that she had to go through that.”

After high school, she gained enough confidence to move from her family’s home in Maryland to New York to audition for professional parts in musicals. At that point, she ditched her birth name, Ellen Cohen, to fashion a moniker combining her nickname, Cass, with that of a friend named Elliot who died in a car crash. She earned a part in the touring company of The Music Man, but only as the “the fat girl” and, though she was in the running for the role of Miss Marmelstein in I Can Get It for You Wholesale, she lost to another promising star: Barbra Streisand. At the time, she lamented to a friend, “There just don’t seem to be many parts for a 200-pound ingenue.”