Mama Cass’s Daughter Clears Up the Ham Sandwich Myth, but Not John Phillips’s Bad Reputation

Nearly 50 years after the charismatic Mamas and the Papas frontwoman Cass Elliot died at the age of 32, her only daughter, Owen Elliot-Kugell, is having her say about her late mother’s life and legacy. In a new memoir, My Mama, Cass, Elliot-Kugell examines the popular image of her mother, as well as the hurtful falsities surrounding her cause of death.

In an interview with The New York Times published Thursday, Elliot-Kugell said that though her mother publicly laughed off the frequent jokes about her weight, that didn’t mean she was actually fine with them. “When I think about some of the things that had allegedly been said to her during her lifetime, you can’t hear that over and over and not let it hurt,” she said. “As she had learned early on, the best way to deal with an uncomfortable situation is with humor.”

Let it be said, once and for all: Cass Elliot did not die from choking on a ham sandwich.

This myth, which Elliot-Kugell recounts in her memoir and has been publicly debunking, began with Elliot’s obituary in The Hollywood Reporter, written by Sue Cameron. Cameron, a veteran entertainment journalist, was friends with Elliot, and included the ham sandwich bit at the behest of Elliot’s manager, the now-deceased Allan Carr. Cameron had called Elliot in her hotel room in London to say hello, and a distraught Carr answered the phone. He said he didn’t know what had happened, but not wanting his client to be associated with the drug use that had likely weakened her heart, along with the years of crash dieting that may have also contributed, he and Cameron came up with an alternative cause of death.

“‘Oh, wait,’” Cameron recalled a panicked Carr saying. “‘I see a half-eaten ham sandwich on the nightstand. That’s good. You tell everybody that she choked on a ham sandwich, do you understand me?’”

“And I did it,” she said. Why? “Because I wanted to protect Cass.”

Elliot had actually died of a heart attack, it was later revealed.

Cameron’s decision, which she said she made in “a state of shock,” has cast a long, long shadow.

“Of all of the things I’ve done, this ham sandwich has followed me my entire life,” Cameron said.

Elliot-Kugell, too, has been haunted by the attribution. She told People, “In my younger years, when people would talk to me about my mom, it was always about the stupid sandwich.”

“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?’” she said. “First of all, the chutzpah to say that to a child is just crazy but it happened a lot. So I felt it was my duty to figure out what that story was all about.”

Elliot-Kugell was only seven years old when her mother died.

That’s not the only myth Elliot-Kugell wants to clear up in her book, which hit shelves on Tuesday. The Mamas and the Papas leader, John Phillips, who died in 2001, has been the subject of posthumous accusations of incest and sexual abuse from his daughter Mackenzie Phillips, following a life of alleged substance abuse and other scandals. John Phillips, too, slung barbs at Elliot, reluctant to let her join the band in the beginning. According to writer Scott G. Shea, Phillips considered Elliot to be “too fat to even be considered” for the group. On a trip to the Virgin Islands, Elliot was hit on the head by construction debris, and Phillips claimed that the injury caused a change in Elliot’s vocal range, and therefore a change of heart for him about letting her join the band.

“The real story is that John didn’t like my mother’s look,” Elliot-Kugell wrote in the memoir. She believes “he made up the story about a fake increase in vocal range to justify his choice to finally add my mom to the band months later.”