Combobox not showing selection?

I have a combobox… I have actually others in this project, and they work fine.

I am trying to just call it using actionscript on the 1st frame for simplicity.

 
contentmain_mc.cart_mc.checkout_mc.country_cb.removeAll();
contentmain_mc.cart_mc.checkout_mc.country_cb.addItem({label:"Please Select...", data:0});

all my other boxes work properly, this should set “Please Select…” as selectIndex 1, but it appears when I open the combo box, but I can’t select it. If I do click on it, the combobox is always empty, no matter what??? my other boxes appear properly, but not these ones…

I tried to set the “prompt” and that does not do anything? doesn’t even appear as a selection…

There must be a conflict somewhere.

any ideas? I don’t get any errors… I don’t call it from anywhere else in my file… and these lines of code are working, but it’s just putting in the combobox, not actually going to it as the first item?

strange…

ok, figured it out… if a movie clip is behind a mask, then the combobox behaves like this??? what gives… I remember all the small quarks like this in flash 8, now I have to waste a day doing stuff like this with CS3…

behind mask - prompt or 1st load doesn’t appear
not behind mask - works just fine