Cass Elliot didn’t die eating a ham sandwich. But the lasting power of that urban legend speaks to a far darker story. Elliot possessed one of the most influential voices of the 1960s. However, while her big break with The Mamas and The Papas and meteoric career changed the LA music scene forever, it also entrapped Elliot in a cycle of fat-shaming, sending her spiraling into catastrophic weight-loss regimens. In this episode, we’ll talk about the music industry’s complicated relationship with weight, how crash dieting likely led to the untimely death of this music legend, and the true legacy of Elliot in pop culture.
This episode was written and performed by Lexi Pandell, a writer from Oakland, California. Her work has been published by The Atlantic, the New York Times, WIRED, The New Republic, Condé Nast Traveler, GQ, Playboy and many others.
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15: Madonna, from Sean to Warren, Part Two
14: Bacall, After Bogart
13: Bogart, Before Bacall
12: Madonna, from Sean to Warren, Part One
11: The Many Loves of Howard Hughes: Katharine Hepburn, 1938
10: Follies of 1938, Chapter 2: Kay Francis, Pretty Poison
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8: Follies of 1938, Part 1: Hollywood’s Greatest Year
7: The Many Loves of Howard Hughes, Chapter 1
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5: The Lives, Deaths and Afterlives of Judy Garland
4: (The Printing of) the Legend of Frances Farmer
3: Happy 110th Birthday, Val Lewton
2: Frank Sinatra in Outer Space
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