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.
150: Blaxploitation and the White Backlash (Six Degrees of Song of the South, Episode 5)
149: White Allies and the Blacklist: Maurice Rapf (Six Degrees of Song of the South, Episode 4)
148: “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah,” Minstrels in Hollywood and The Oscars (Six Degrees of Song of the South, Episode 3)
147: Hattie McDaniel (Six Degrees of Song of the South, Episode 2)
146: Disney’s Most Controversial Film (Six Degrees of Song of the South, Episode 1)
Sneak Peek: Six Degrees of "Song of the South"
145: Ramon Novarro (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 19)
144: The Trials of Confidential Magazine: Maureen O'Hara (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 18)
143: The Trials of Confidential Magazine: Dorothy Dandridge (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 17)
142: Bugsy Siegel (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 16)
141: Marlene Dietrich, Claudette Colbert, and the “sewing circle” (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 15)
140: Lupe Velez (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 14)
139: Mary Astor's Diary (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 13)
138: Mae West (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 12)
137: Gina Lollobrigida (The Seduced, Episode 6)
136: Yvonne De Carlo
135: Linda Darnell (The Seduced, Episode 4)
134: Ann Dvorak (The Seduced, Episode 3)
133: The Bacchanal of 1920s Hollywood, via Frederica Sagor Maas (The Seduced Episode 2)
Rupert Hughes's Women (The Seduced, Episode 1)
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