Past Event: Family Narratives/Cultural Shifts Film Screening Series: Secret Daughter (1996)

In "Secret Daughter" producer Cross takes FRONTLINE viewers on an epic journey across the racial divide, into the hidden world of Hollywood and Black Vaudeville and deep into the painful, complicated relationship between an abandoned daughter and the mother who gave her away. Cross interviews distant relatives, close family members, and Jimmy Cross's entertainment contemporaries, including comedian Jerry Lewis, to reconstruct the mosaic of her life. She explores her father's history, tracking down old friends, exposing the racial aspects of show business in the post-war era as well as forming a picture of the father she harbored anger toward her entire life.