Onstage with her group the Mamas and the Papas at the Monterey International Pop Festival in June 1967, Cass Elliot bantered with the timing of a vaudeville comedian. “Somebody asked me today when I was going to have the baby; that’s funny ,” she said, rolling her eyes. The unspoken punchline — if you could call it that — was that she had already given birth to a daughter six weeks earlier.
“One of the things that appeals to so many people about my mom is that there’s a certain level of triumph over adversity,” that daughter, Owen Elliot-Kugell, said. “She had to prove herself over and over again.” Elliot was a charismatic performer who exuded infectious joy and a magnificent vocalist with acting chops she did not live to fully explore.
July 29 is the 50th anniversary of her untimely death at 32, a tragedy that still spurs unanswerable questions. Might Elliot, who was one of Johnny Carson’s most beloved substitutes, have become the first female late-night talk show host? Would she have achieved EGOT status? “No one’s getting fat except Mama Cass,” the Mamas and the Papas sang in tight harmony on the self-mythologizing 1967 hit “ Creeque Alley.” After the infamously tumultuous group broke up a year later, Elliot was a frequent guest on “The Carol Burnett Show,” where she occasionally went for the cheap laugh.
In an otherwise uproarious sketch about two prudish women browsing a store’s “dirty books” section, Elliot holds up a book title.