‘Dedicated to the One I Love’: Cass Elliot’s Daughter Gets Her ‘Mama’ a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
variety.comRoy Trakin There’s a famous photograph by Henry Diltz of Joni Mitchell playing guitar in Mama Cass Elliot’s Laurel Canyon backyard, with David Crosby holding up a joint in back and Eric Clapton sitting cross-legged watching transfixed.
There, in the foreground, is Cass’ nine-month-old daughter Owen, teething on a film canister. “I often wonder what I was thinking,” says the now-55-year-old mother of two kids in their 20s, who lives in Encino with her husband of 31 years. “Clearly, I was thinking about that film canister.
It was all pretty surreal, pretty cool.” Owen Elliot-Kugell, the only child of Mama Cass of the Mamas & the Papas, the seminal co-ed group that came to define the sound of 1960s hippie culture, has for years spearheaded the campaign to get her mother a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
The ceremony will finally take place on Monday, Oct. 3 on a stretch of Hollywood Blvd. between Sycamore and LaBrea alongside the stars of Sidney Poitier and Tyne Daly, with the likes of bandmate Michelle Phillips and good friend John Sebastian on hand to mark the occasion. “I can’t tell you the number of people over the years who have told me how much my mother’s music and who she was affected them, and made a major difference in their lives,” says Owen, who was seven when Mama Cass died in a London flat in 1974 at 32 of a heart attack, most definitely not choking on a ham sandwich, as urban legend had it. “The childhood memories I have are not numerous, but they are vivid,” says Owen, who was raised by Cass’ sister Leah and her husband, noted drummer Russ Kunkel, in both Los Angeles and western Massachusetts. “I do have a treasure trove of written and video interviews, including one from ‘The Dinah Shore Show,’ when
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