FRONTLINE: SECRET DAUGHTER (TV)
Summary
One in this documentary series. This program documents the life story of Frontline reporter June Cross as she investigates her parents and her mixed-race heritage.
June is the daughter of Norma Storch and Jimmy Cross; her mother is white while her father is African-American, a fact which has divided her family for decades. Her mother gave her up to be raised by an African-American family when she was a very young age; everyone else believes she was simply adopted, but she always knew of her mother’s true identity. She is now determined to get her mother to give her side of the story on national television, but believes that such a request will be difficult for her to fulfill. She consults with her brother Lary and his wife Lany, learning about her grandmother, June Steffensen, a woman with a reputation as a “free spirit” who came from a Mormon background; Cross feels that her grandmother never accepted her due to her mixed-race heritage. Norma and Jimmy were together for several years, and Lary lived as Jimmy’s stepson during that time. In the 1940’s and 50’s, Jimmy was part of a successful comedy duo, “Stump and Stumpy,” and Norma kept her relationship with Jimmy secret from much of her social circle.
Norma has spent the past 35 years married to actor Larry Storch, and June is curious to find out her mother’s side of the story. June attempts to shoot the film herself, but forgets to turn on the microphone for the three-hour interview with her mother. She is touched by what she discovers, including an incident in which Jimmy struck her and no one came to her defense. June prepares to call Norma to re-do the interview, although she is extremely nervous and uncomfortable with doing so. They argue over the phone, as Norma no longer wishes to do the interview due to racial tensions stirred up by the O.J. Simpson murder trial. June is disappointed by Norma’s resistance. June recounts how Norma gave her away to an African-American family in Atlantic City, New Jersey when she was four years old; in present-day she visits the Jersey shore to collect herself. She recounts growing up there and the racial situation there in the 1950’s, as well as the influence of her adoptive “aunt” and “uncle.” She interviews James Usry, her elementary school principal; her “aunt” Peggy was a schoolteacher and “uncle” Paul worked as both a county clerk and a taxi cab driver. The two of them have a number of businesses over the years, mostly “catered to colored.”
June attends an exhibit on African-American history at the Atlantic City Museum, and meets her “aunt” Sheila there; Sheila and her family were high-achieving people who were close friends with Paul and Peggy, and served as inspiration to June in her youth. She also interviews her childhood friend Regina Richardson, who talks about Peggy’s forward-thinking nature. During June’s childhood segregation is in full effect, and African-Americans have their own beach, stores, schools, and neighborhoods. June visits the house that Peggy and Paul used to own, now fallen into disrepair. While there she recounts her early days with Paul and Peggy and the intense resentment she felt towards them, making the first few years of her residence there difficult. As she grows older she comes to realize that her life is not as normal as she once thought. When her mother marries Storch, she flits between the “staid” lifestyle that Peggy engenders and her mother’s new, more glamorous life in Hollywood. June discusses her hair and how it symbolizes her attitudes towards her own race, particularly when she was a child.
In Hollywood, June visits Larry as he appears for a celebrity photo shoot celebrating “TV cowboys,” and he meets with his “F Troop” co-star Ken Berry. He believes that Norma will change her mind about the interview since “things are moving so fast” in terms of interracial relationships. June recounts trouble stemming from publicity photos taken of the “F Troop” cast and their families, and that a cover story was devised to account for her presence. Family friend Janice Morgan recounts the attitudes surrounding June’s relation to the family at the time. Norma keeps her distance; according to some she is worried about the attitudes of some of her “ultra-conservative” friends and fears rejection. She also wonders about her father and why she never got to meet him; she learns what she can about him from Lary and from Harold Cromer, the other half of “Stump and Stumpy.” She also interviews Leroy Meyers and Buster Brown, members of the “Copasetics” tap dancing group and longtime friends of Jimmy, as well as Lois Basden, Jimmy’s common-law wife after he divorced Norma; they note that he was comedic, spontaneous, and suffered from alcoholism. June recounts going to meet him when he was in his 60’s and dying of cancer at his apartment at St. Nicholas Avenue in New York City. She demands to know why he had not been there for her all her life; he recounts that Norma was the one who left him and that he feels it was a good decision, and that visiting June would have caused more problems. He dies the week after her visit.
Nine months elapse before Norma permits June to interview her again. She recounts spending her early childhood on an Indian reservation; her mother left her in the care of her grandparents, and she recounts growing up alongside her cousins. At the age of nine she leaves the reservation and joins her mother in Long Beach, California. Her stepfather Eric, a German who supported the Nazi movement, tried to instill racist ideology in her, but Norma did not approve of his way of thinking. Jimmy grew up in a poor neighborhood in Philadelphia and started dancing on street corners at a very young age. He gained popularity on a local television show for his skill at impressions, particularly one of Louis Armstrong. At the age of fifteen he is brought by the show’s producer to New York, where he starts to achieve fame. Norma graduates from high school in 1939 and has a brief romance with surfer Jack May, Lary is born as a result. She places him in boarding school at a young age and goes to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. Lary ends up spending much of his childhood in foster homes while Norma tries to pursue a career, leaving him somewhat resentful of her. During this time, both Larry and Jimmy pursue stage careers in New York City, and become friends after they hang out after their shows, drawing inspiration from each other.
At the New York Library for the Performing Arts, June searches for records pertaining to Jimmy’s career. During World War II, he and many other performers join the special services division. However, segregation inhibits his success; he appears in the 1943 film version of “This is the Army,” but his number is excised for Southern theaters. When he gets out of the army, he finds that his comedy partner has become a heroin addict, and he finds Cromer as a replacement in 1948. Contemporary performers believe that Jimmy and Cromer were “ahead of their time” but never received proper recognition for their work in comedy. Jerry Lewis recounts seeing Jimmy’s work, and believes that he was influenced by his comedic style. Jimmy bore no ill will towards Lewis, merely stating that “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” In the fall of 1946 Larry is performing in San Francisco and meets Norma for the first time. This begins a long on-and-off romance culminating in their marriage, complicated by Larry’s family disapproving of him having an African-American stepdaughter. Cromer recounts how he and Jimmy opened for Billie Holiday at the Strand Theater at that time, and his circle becomes embroiled in “backstage shenanigans,” ignoring racial boundaries.
In 1952, Norma comes to New York to visit Larry, although he does not accept her initially and they remain separated until 1960. In the intervening time she meets Jimmy by introducing herself backstage to him during a show at the Paramount Theater. June is surprised to hear her mother praise Jimmy’s comedy performances, as Norma has never spoken well of Jimmy before. Those years prove to be Jimmy’s most successful period financially, and Norma pursues a relationship with Jimmy but tries not to tell her family too much about it. Lary recounts going to live with Norma and Jimmy in Harlem, and how it proved to be a strange experience for him, particularly when Norma and Jimmy tried to deal with the overwhelming bias against interracial couples. Jimmy still manages to get steady work in Atlantic City, and Lary lives amongst African-American children, commenting on what he learned about their segregated communities. During this time Norma befriends Peggy and often leaves Lary with her while Jimmy is off getting work. They bond over their status as “sublimated intellectuals” and their “headstrong” nature. In 1953, as Norma’s relationship with Jimmy suffers some setbacks, she discovers she is pregnant with his child. Despite her misgivings, Norma gives birth to June and at first is quite happy with her. As a baby June’s complexion was essentially Caucasian, but her skin tone darkens of the next few years, presenting a dilemma for Norma, who starts working as a hat check girl to support her family.
The level of racism permeating society proves to be extremely problematic for the family; they are not accepted either by relatives or by their community. The rise of television leads to a decline in attendance of clubs and theaters, representing a fundamental shift in the entertainment industry. Jimmy is unable to capitalize on this new trend, as African-Americans are largely not welcomed on television, and “Stump and Stumpy” and other performers suffer from a long “drought.” Norma and Lary recount how unhappy and frustrated Jimmy was at the time; he starts conning money and spending it on alcohol and marijuana. He becomes physically violent towards Norma on multiple occasions, which proves to be quite traumatic for both her and Lary. Norma recounts how she essentially “snuck off” from Jimmy and took the children to live with her in another apartment at West 67th Street without Jimmy’s knowledge. Jimmy is emotionally devastated by this act; Lary notes that the violence was a “strange” way of trying to keep the family together. Their new environment proves to be unwelcoming when their neighbors form a petition to evict them on “moral standards.” Norma says that she realized that she needed to find a better way of bringing up June so as not to make her feel outcast or unwelcome, and this leads to her decision to leave her with Peggy and Paul. She recounts how difficult it was to give her up and the emotions she felt during their visits; she would say that June was adopted since she didn’t want her friends in Hollywood to look down on her, not wishing to damage Larry’s career.
Matters are further complicated when Paul dies as a result of his heavy smoking habit when June is thirteen years old. Her visits to Norma grow more frequent in the late 1960’s, and Peggy worries that she would be “seduced” by the Hollywood night life. She feels as though she is living a “dual life,” similar to her mother’s, and reflects on her sense of “abandonment” and her feelings about perceptions of race. Peggy passes away in 1981, and June feels guilty that their relationship frayed in her later years. In 1964, when Atlantic City hosts the Democratic National Convention, Peggy shows June several displays relating to civil rights struggles in the South, and about the deaths caused by organization such as the Ku Klux Klan. June starts to become aware of the nationwide implications of racial issues and in 1965 watches the Watts Riots on television. June tells Norma about the one of the first times she became aware of what role her race played in society, recounting memories from her childhood which illustrated these points.
Seeking more closure with her mother, June decides to investigate her grandmother’s life in Fort Hall, Idaho. The local population are largely Mormon, and their religion looks down on people of dark skin complexion, viewing it as “a mark of original sin.” Lary tries to arrange a meeting between June and her mother’s cousin, Fay Bailey. They speak on the phone; they have had no interaction before and Fay was apparently unaware of June’s existence until recently. June goes to visit her in a local hospital, where she is greeted warmly and takes a liking to Fay immediately. They discuss the attitudes of June’s grandmother and what Norma was like as a child. She also goes to visit Fay’s son Lee, who has compiled a genealogy of their family. They discuss June’s long-standing resentment of Mormons based on her grandmother’s attitudes; she notes that in 1978 the Mormon Church allowed African-Americans to join their ranks and around that same time her grandmother passed away. Still wanting for answers, June returns to New York to visit Harlem, going to the places her father frequented. While viewing old films of stage stars on the streets of Harlem, she comes across a brief snippet showing Jimmy carrying her around as an infant. June notes that her anger towards her parents has begun to subside as she has grown older.
In 1975, Jimmy appears in his final taped performance, and in present day June visits his grave. At some point she discovers that she has a half-sister, Lynda, an actress and drama teacher, on her father’s side, and they reconnect with each other. She discovers that Jimmy and Lynda’s mother had to give her up for adoption, and by the time she found Jimmy the woman had been dead for two years; it is during this meeting that Jimmy mentions to Lynda that she has a half-sister. June finds that Lynda’s life story is quite similar to her own; her mother was also white and she was also left to be raised by an African-American family. June and Lynda feel a sense of belonging with each other and form a close friendship. June visits the neighborhood in Philadelphia where Jimmy grew up, and finds the house where his mother, Rose Cross, held an apartment; she passed away in 1968. June manages to find residents who were once her neighbors, and learns about her through them. The current resident of the apartment refuses to let her in the building. She also finds the last trace of the Cross family, her father’s grand-niece Pam, who is surprised to learn of their relation to each other. June, her mother, her brother, and his family gather in Minneapolis for Thanksgiving, and June is filled with mixed emotions at the occasion. In the aftermath of June’s film, Norma and June both have a better understanding of their lives and find that it is easier to talk about the complex issues surrounding them.
Details
- NETWORK: PBS
- DATE: November 26, 1997 9:00 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 1:56:21
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: B:53709
- GENRE: Public affairs/documentaries
- SUBJECT HEADING: Public affairs/documentaries
- SERIES RUN: PBS - TV series, 1983-
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- David Fanning … Executive Producer
- Michael Sullivan … Executive Producer
- Robin Parmelee … Coordinating Producer
- June Cross … Producer
- John Baynard … Co-Producer, Director
- Jean-Philippe Boucicaut … Co-Producer
- Patti Williamson … Associate Producer
- Sheila Hairston … Field Producer
- Courtney Hayes … Researcher
- Mario Valdes … Researcher
- Waldron Ricks … Music by
- June Cross … Narrator, Reporter
- Norma Storch … Interviewee
- Lary May … Interviewee
- Lany May … Interviewee
- James Usry … Interviewee
- Sheila Gregory-Thomas … Interviewee
- Larry Storch … Interviewee
- Janice Morgan … Interviewee
- Harold Cromer … Interviewee
- Leroy Meyers … Interviewee
- Buster Brown … Interviewee
- Lois Basden … Interviewee
- Jerry Lewis … Interviewee
- Maurice Hines … Interviewee
- Fay Bailey … Interviewee
- Lee Bailey … Interviewee
- Lynda Gravatt … Interviewee
- Louis Armstrong
- Ken Berry
- Paul Bush
- Peggy Bush
- Jimmy Cross
- Rose Cross
- Billie Holiday
- Jack May
- O.J. Simpson
- June Steffensen