Cass Elliot

            On Friday morning I continued to edit “Ballade de la chnoufe” by Boris Vian to prepare it for publication on my Christian’s Translations blog. 

            I worked out the chords for the first half of the chorus of “Dessous mon pull” (Under My Sweater) by Serge Gainsbourg.  

            I weighed 88.85 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio for the first of two sessions. 

            Around midday I started cleaning the blue paint from the wall tiles below the blue trim that separates the pinkish purple wall paint from the tiles. Not wanting to remove any paint from the trim I needed something to precisely take the paint from the edge and found that toilet paper, alcohol and my fingernail worked best after breaking up the paint a bit with a wooden skewer dipped in alcohol. I got three and a half tiles done and it makes the trim look a lot better. I’d been thinking that where the trim meets the wall it’s uneven but when the lower part is straightened out it makes the top look straighter. 

            I weighed 89.7 kilos before lunch.

            I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 89.4 kilos at 18:25. 

            I was still a day behind in my journal and so I worked on getting caught up. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a slice of roast pork tenderloin while watching season 4, episode 8 of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            In the first skit George (played by Harvey) wakes up with a hangover after the annual office party at his place of work and doesn’t remember anything that happened. He hears a woman gargling in the bathroom and then an extremely nerdy and unattractive woman played by Carol comes out of the bathroom. She says her name is Zelda and she works in accounting. She informs him to his horror that they are married now and she’s quitting her job to be a full time housewife for him in his bachelor apartment. She plans to throw out all of his furniture and decorations since she’s the one who’ll have to live with them while he’s working. He grabs the phone book to look for a lawyer but she takes it from him and rips it in half. Her mother arrives to live with them and she’s just like Zelda. He’s told he’ll be sleeping on a cot from now on. 

            Cass Elliot sings “The Good Times Are Comin” by John Barry and Hal David. 

            Next Carol and Cass play a couple of wallflowers at a dance. Harvey and Lyle approach them to ask if they are dancing the next dance. They smile and say “no”. But then the guys say, would you mind watching our coats for us? The girls then sing “Nobody’s Heart Belongs to Me by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Then Carol, Vickie and Cass sing “Tell Us Where the Good Times Are” by Bob Merrill from 1953. They follow this with “Big Yellow Taxi” by Joni Mitchell, with images of pollution shown on the screen. Carol had just started on an anti-pollution campaign around this time.

            In the next skit Carol plays Hester Williams, a parody of swimming movie star Esther Williams. The location is Acapulco and she comes to the hacienda of billionaire playboy Antonio (played by Ricardo Montalban). When she walks she strokes her arms as if she’s swimming. When she sits on the couch she holds her nose as if she’s diving under water. When she shakes her head you can hear water sloshing. Carol parodies Esther Williams’s limited acting abilities. He kisses her and she says she has so awakened passion in her that now all she can do is swim it off. She throws off her dress revealing a one piece bathing suit and goes to swim in his pool. This is the first Carol Burnett skit that’s been done outdoors. She starts singing “You’d Be So Easy to Love” by Cole Porter and dives into the pool. She continues the song while swimming and sometimes gurgling. She ends the song by diving out of the pool and back onto his patio. She walks back in to his home and her hair’s not wet at all. Now she wants to leave and they sing “Baby It’s Cold Outside” together. It’s by Frank Loesser and was popularized in the film Neptune’s Daughter starring Esther Williams. 

            In the final sketch Carol’s character the Charwoman is mopping up at a circus. She meets a ragged clown who gives her a dead long stemmed rose. He silently indicates that he is going to juggle three balls while balancing a feather on his nose. But he drops a ball right away and while bending forward to pick it up the feather is clearly glued to his nose. He sweeps the spotlight into a small circle then picks it up and hands it to her. She puts it in her pocket. She gives him her bucket to sit on and then sits on the floor beside him. She sings “It’s Only a Paper Moon” by Harold Arlen, Yip Harburg and Billy Rose from 1933. Then she sings “Look for the Silver Lining” by Jerome Kern and B.G. De Sylva from 1919. 

            At the end she thanks “the world’s greatest clown”, Emmett Kelly. 

            Cass Elliot performed in a summer stock production of The Boyfriend during her senior year in high school and made her decide to pursue show business over college. She competed with Barbara Streisand for the role of Miss Marmelstein in “I Can Get it for You Wholesale”. In 1963 she formed folk trio called The Triumvirate with Tim Rose and John Brown. They changed their name to The Big 3 when John Brown was replaced by James Hendricks. They performed on The Tonight Show, Hootenanny, and The Danny Kaye Show. Rose left they were joined by Canadians Denny Doherty and Zal Yanovsky. They changed their name to the Mugwumps. Her vocal range improved by three notes after she was hit in the head by some copper tubing while walking through a construction site. Doherty joined John Phillips and Michele Phillips as The New Journeymen. When Cass joined them they became The Mamas and the Papas. From 1965 to 1968 the Mamas and Papas was a supergroup with a string of hits. Cass went solo in 1968 with Dream a Little Dream of Me. She appeared on the Tonight Show 13 times and guest hosted once. She featured on the first episode of Midnight Special. She released five solo albums. She recorded an album with Dave Mason. In the early 70s she made appearances on all the popular TV variety shows. She co-starred in the movie Pufnstuf. She was so upset when the IRS told her she owed them $10,000 she paid it all in pennies. But it cost her an extra $3000 to deliver the coins and then they threatened her with contempt and she had to pay to have the pennies removed. In 1974 after several sellout shows at the London Palladium she went to a string of parties and luncheons to celebrate but in the end died of a heart attack at the age of 33. She was not a big fan of rock music and preferred classical, jazz, and showtunes. She said her biggest let down was being in a pop group that turned out to be like everything it was supposed to be against. A movie about Cass Elliot starring Jessica Gunning is in production.