Hey Mel,
I’m not at my Flame right now but if I might try adding the front layer to your action with a 50% split on your crop, then you should be able to go into your CC on your background layer and grade within context to the Action rather than the Result. That should work. Of course Batch would solve this far more easily as you would simply add the CC node between your clip and background input and then grade setting your Context1 to your Action node and then grading while looking through that rather than via your Result view.
Hope it helps!