Excerpt
Cass Elliot’s Daughter on the Last Time She Saw Her Mom
In an excerpt from her new book, My Mama, Cass, Owen-Elliot Kugell reflects on the last time she saw her mother, and explains her quest to honor her legacy
Owen Elliot-Kugell was just seven years old when her mother, “Mama” Cass Elliot, died of a heart attack in 1974. Since then, she’s tried to untangle the myth of the hippie icon — especially the insensitive rumor that she died choking on a ham sandwich — and discover who she actually was as a person. She spent over a decade working on her new book, My Mama, Cass, out now via Hachette Books. In an excerpt below, taken from the book’s introduction, Elliot-Kugell reflects on the last time she saw her mother, and her quest to honor her legacy.
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Mom drove a midnight-blue Cadillac convertible with white leather seats and personalized blue-and-gold California license plates that read ISIS. Isis, the Egyptian goddess of life and magic, was undoubtedly someone my mother considered very cool.
I loved riding in that car with her, listening to her sing along to the radio. Her voice was strong and sweet, easily the most recognizable of the four-part harmony that had made the Mamas and the Papas famous. To millions of her fans, she was known as “Mama” Cass Elliot, the Earth Mother figure of the Los Angeles hippie scene of the late 1960s. But to me, she was just my mom.
Sometimes, I would sing along with her from the backseat. One afternoon in 1974 as we headed out to run errands together, we cruised down Laurel Canyon Boulevard, past the fabled Country Store in the middle of the canyon, and down into the heart of Hollywood. We were riding down Fountain Avenue when “Top of the World” by the Carpenters came on AM station KHJ. As we turned left down La Cienega, she encouraged me to sing along.
I felt shy about singing with her because her voice was so extraordinary. So I sang quietly to myself until I felt more secure, then allowed my voice to get louder as my confidence grew.
I’m on the top of the world
Looking down upon creation
And the only explanation I can find
Is the love that I’ve found ever since you’ve been around
Your love’s put me on the top of the world
My mom’s bracelets jangled on her wrists as she sang and steered the car down Sunset Boulevard. She always wore four gold bangles, three from Tiffany & Co. and one made by Cartier. The bracelets made a clinking sound like soft wind chimes as she used her hands to gesture during conversation, or just when she moved about.
My mother loved the trappings of her success. She would visit Tiffany & Co. on Fifth Avenue whenever she was in New York City and was known to saunter about the store wearing a huge yellow canary diamond that she could never afford to buy but loved to fantasize about.
By 1974, my mother was embarking on a solo career. She had two weeks’ worth of sold-out shows booked at the London Palladium that summer and I was going to spend the time in Baltimore, Maryland, with my Grandma Bess, whom I adored, and who adored me in return. Grandma called me “Miss America” and spoiled me rotten. I would go to day camp in Baltimore near her house that summer and make new friends. I was going to have so much fun, my mother said.
On the day that I was to leave Los Angeles in June of 1974, my nanny packed my brand-new, size 6x summer clothes into a suitcase, with my blankie tucked away safely inside. It was white with the letters of the alphabet and corresponding animals printed on it. I couldn’t sleep without my blankie, which was well loved and tattered by this point. Truth be told, I still have it. It’s now folded up in a safe place in my closet, and I find comfort knowing it’s there.
My mother drove me to the airport on that June day. We headed down the familiar route down Laurel Canyon Boulevard, past the Country Store, until it turned into Crescent Heights Boulevard. Then it was on to La Cienega Boulevard all the way down to Los Angeles International Airport.
I’d flown out of LAX before, when my mother brought me to England in 1971 to record The Road Is No Place for a Lady, her second record for RCA as a solo artist, at the world-famous Trident Studios. She made a habit of bringing me along on work trips whenever she could. I’d also been to the arrivals section of LAX several times to pick her up when she would return from traveling for work. On one of those occasions, my nanny and I had been waiting for my mom to arrive, when I spotted her walking out of the baggage claim area onto the sidewalk. She was wearing one of her characteristic flowered, floor-length caftans, with a big floppy hat and her aviator sunglasses. Released from my nanny’s grip, I ran as fast as I could toward my mom, who crouched down and threw her arms open wide to receive me.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only person who had spotted my mom coming out of those airport doors. As I was approaching her running at nearly full speed, a man with long dark hair stepped directly into my path and asked her for her autograph. I slowed down and stopped in my tracks. Even at that young age, I understood that people admired my mom and wanted to talk to her, that they were important to her, and that it was part of her job to be nice to them. I also knew that I would have my turn with her as soon as she was done with them, and I knew to wait. Then I would get my hug and kiss.
On this day in 1974 my mother took my small hand in hers and led us through airport security and down to my plane’s departure gate. We sat and waited until my flight was announced and we were called up to preboard, since I was traveling alone. Grandma was going to meet me on the other end, but it was my first time flying by myself. We talked about the things I would do at camp. “You’re going to learn how to swim better, and then you can show me when we get home,” she said. She wrapped her arms around me and gave me a big squeeze. Her bracelets jangled, making their familiar, comforting sound.
Soon the time came for me to board. My mom led me onto the plane and helped me find my seat. She buckled me in and kissed both my cheeks repeatedly. Left-right, left-right, left- right. “I’m going to miss you so much. I’m going to think about you every single minute of every single day,” she whispered in my ear. “I love you so much.”
She reminded me of the things that we would do together at the end of the summer when she returned. I was going to start at a new school, and she would be home for a while so we could spend uninterrupted time together.
“The time is going to fly by,” she promised. “You’re not even gonna notice. You’ll be so busy at camp and with Grandma. She might even take you to Florida to see Bubby and Ben. And before you even know it, we’ll be together again.”
She gave me a last hug and kiss goodbye and started making her way down the airplane aisle. Taking just a few steps, she turned and looked back at me.
“Don’t forget to look out your window. I’ll be right there in the airport window, waving at you. Look for me,” she said, and I did.
A few minutes later she was there at the terminal window, waving frantically at the plane. I waved back, hoping that she’d see me. I wasn’t convinced that she could but even now, especially now, I hope she did. Because that was the last time I saw her — and the last time she saw me — through that airport terminal window, waving goodbye.
My memories of childhood are not numerous, but they’re vivid. I’ve thought about that last goodbye, nearly fifty years ago, many times since then. I can remember the details as if they happened yesterday. And I’d rather hold on to that image of my mother than the one that others tried to superimpose on her final days. Because when she died, a stupid rumor circulated about her cause of death, and a certain ham sandwich turned into an urban legend.
I knew there had to be more to this story. After she was found lifeless in her bedroom in London on July 29, 1974, the official autopsy report revealed that the cause of her death had nothing to do with choking or with food. Her heart had stopped beating in her sleep. She’d had a heart attack.
There had to be a reason why such a rumor would circulate in the first place. I could feel it in my bones. I made it my mission to figure out why. I had to for my own edification. I needed to separate my mother from that myth and all the others that swirled around her, to discern fact from fiction. Because only then could I learn who she truly was and, in turn, who I am, not just as her daughter but as a woman in this world.
Challenging authority and asking questions are behaviors that were common among all the women who preceded me. We inherited them from my great-grandmother Chaya, who had the guts to leave Poland and sail to America on her own in 1914.
That alone takes serious courage. And perseverance. And an instinct for survival.
When I first considered writing this book, I asked my great-aunt Lil, Chaya’s youngest child, to tell me about my mom. Lil was ninety at the time. I shared my desire to learn the truth about my mother’s life and death and to write her story, the story she didn’t get a chance to write herself.
Lil’s immediate response was, “What the hell do you know about her? You were too young.”
“Exactly,” I said. “That’s the point.”
Excerpted from My Mama, Cass: A Memoir by Owen Elliot-Kugell. Copyright © 2024. Available from Hachette Books, an imprint of Perseus Books LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group Inc.