Dorothy Dandridge was the first African-American nominated for the Best Actress Oscar, but this episode looks past the awards to what being first actually cost her. It begins in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1922, with a childhood spent touring the Chitlin Circuit as one of the Wonder Children under a harsh disciplinarian, follows the Dandridge Sisters to the Cotton Club and the coin-operated Soundies of the early 1940s, and examines her refusal to accept the maid and servant roles Hollywood offered Black actresses. Her record-breaking 1951 nightclub opening in West Hollywood led to Bright Road opposite Harry Belafonte and then to the transformation she engineered to win the lead in Otto Preminger's Carmen Jones.

The conversation then turns to the career trap set by Preminger's advice to accept only starring roles, the private devastation of her daug ...