Sue Cameron last saw Cass Elliot, the singer of The Mamas & the Papas, on a gorgeous summer night in late July 1974. The two went to Mr. Chow in Beverly Hills for dinner.
“It was the night before she was flying to London to open her solo concert series at the Palladium,” the writer tells PEOPLE. “We cruised along Mulholland Drive in her electric blue Cadillac. ‘Monday, Monday’ came on the radio, and she sang along. She was so happy. She had really made it.”
On July 29, after a few days, Cameron received the news that Elliott had passed away at the age of 32. She dialed her London apartment number right away. “When her manager Allan Carr answered the phone, he was inconsolable.
“You have to tell them that she choked to death on a ham sandwich,” Allan remarked. You have to write that on your typewriter. Her nightstand contains half of a ham sandwich.”
“I didn’t ask any questions,” says Cameron, then a columnist at The Hollywood Reporter, who later wrote the story behind the story in her 2018 book Hollywood Secrets and Scandals. “I knew she didn’t choke on a ham sandwich. I didn’t believe Allan, but I thought just do it because something was wrong.”
On this day in 1974, Mama Cass Elliot sadly died, far too young. I got to meet her once when when I was the musical guest on the Tonight Show in ’73—she was guest-hosting that week. Her music is immortal. pic.twitter.com/t2FIzS7pLl
— ThePatBoone (@Pat_Boone) July 29, 2022
“The ham sandwich went worldwide,” Cameron tells PEOPLE. “Many people don’t realize that it’s not even true. Even though I have said — and written — it’s not true, it still goes on. I never thought it would last as long as it has.”
Cameron met Carr a few days after the singer passed away, and the two of them mourned their friend. “We held each other and cried and cried,” she recounts. “I was trying to save her reputation, so thank you for writing that,” he replied. It was a terrible defeat.
Elliot suffered a heart attack, according to the autopsy; no narcotics were discovered in her system. However, further information regarding the singer’s drug usage was made public in the years following her passing. This information included the crash diets she occasionally followed before shows, which may have damaged her heart.
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“Afterwards, people who had been around her would say, ‘You mean you didn’t know?'” says Cameron. “But I never saw any drugs. I was so straight-laced that people, even if they did drugs, didn’t do them around me.”
Cameron composed Elliot’s obituary the day before she passed away and then hurried over to her home.
“The gates were open. The front door was unlocked. I just went there to protect anything because sometimes,s on the day a famous person dies, people try to get into the house. Something in my head told me to go upstairs. Why lie about a ham sandwich? So I went up to her bedroom and looked in the cabinets, and it was completely cleaned out,” Cameron says.
“I was a guest at a party many years later, and there was a famous model from that time [there]. “I was the one who was there and cleaned out the drugs,” she stated when the subject of Cass somehow came up. It seemed strange because thirty years had passed. I must have arrived just behind her.”
29 July 1974. Pop star, Mama Cass Elliot, the former lead singer of The Mamas and Papas, died (aged 32) in Flat 12, 9 Curzon Square, London. In 1978, Who drummer, Keith Moon, died in the same apartment. It was owned by the US singing star Harry Nilsson. pic.twitter.com/aoqOQwnZxe
— Prof. Frank McDonough (@FXMC1957) July 29, 2023
Elliot had broken up with her folk-rock ensemble, which included Michelle Phillips, Dennis Doherty, and John Phillips, at the time of her London shows and had started a solo career. Years after her passing, Cameron still views her buddy as “a free spirit and very sophisticated,” connecting with her through their mutual passion for musical theater.
“We shared a Laurel Canyon apartment building a few blocks apart. Joni Mitchell was a neighbor. They initiated the entire Laurel Canyon movement. I really clicked with Cass. We’d go out and play tennis.”
She also recalls how hurtful Elliot’s weight-related abuse was to her. “Cass was overweight, and there was a lot of body shaming then, but we didn’t call it that,” says Cameron. “She concealed it. ‘The funny one’ was her name. Being perceived as “the fat one” and Michelle [Phillips] as the attractive one was terrible for her. That would be said to Cass’s face by others. She had to laugh it off and swallow it.”
Cameron remembers how Elliot had given her some personal items to keep safe on their final night together. “She said that the folks she had employed to live in her home were untrustworthy. She handed me some pictures, some personal souvenirs, her grandmother’s bedspread, and some of her grandmother’s lace. “I’ll pick them up when I get back,” she declared.
Cameron goes on, “I handed her all her mom’s stuff that I had kept when her daughter Owen became eighteen. Owen once showed me Cass’s diaries, in which she referred to our appointment with Mr. Chow. That’s how I’ll always think of her. How content she felt that evening. In addition, for her gift, joy, and laughter.”
