ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, April 13, 1996 TAG: 9604160008
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PATRICIA BRENNAN THE WASHINGTON POST
A well-to-do Canadian sets out to find a husband for his beloved only child. He makes a disastrous error: He chooses a cruel man who sells her into slavery in the American South.
From that kernel of tragic truth comes the otherwise fictionalized ``Captive Heart: The James Mink Story'' (airing Sunday night at 9 on WDBJ-Channel 7).
Mink, son of an ex-slave who went to Canada in the early 1800s, was doing very well. He had established thriving businesses in Toronto by 1852. Local politicians were urging him to run for office. He and Elizabeth, his Irish-born wife, adored their daughter, Mary.
At 17, Mary was a young woman of privilege who was hoping to continue her education and become a teacher.
``At that time, 1852, all the fathers were arranging marriages,'' said ``Captive Heart's'' executive producer, Dorothea G. Petrie. ``And he decided he wanted Mary to a have a good marriage. And he also believed she should marry a white man, because she would have an easier life. Canada abolished slavery in the 1700s, and they did not frown on mixed marriages.
``James Mink actually put an ad in the Toronto Globe & Mail for a $10,000 dowry, and he had lots of people to interview. He was a powerful man, a proud man, and he was highly courted by the politicians. He had a hotel and livery stable in Toronto; his brother, George, had a livery company in London, Ontario.
``We know that she [Mary] was married to a man named William Johnson.''
Johnson sold Arabian horses to prosperous Canadians. But he was not the gentleman Mink thought he was. When the Minks finally heard from Mary after the marriage, she wrote that she was now a slave and pleaded for help.
``What we don't know,'' said Petrie, ``is whether her family went down to the United States to find her in real life.''
In ``Captive Heart'' they do. History apparently does not record what the Minks did, or whether James Mink ever saw his daughter again. Executive consultant Louis Gossett Jr., who portrays Mink, thinks she returned to Canada later in life, but he doesn't know whether James Mink was still alive.
But lack of information did not stop Petrie and Gossett from creating the story of what might have happened.
The tale, filmed in Ontario, was written by Brian Bird and John Wierick from a story developed by Bryon White, a Canadian editor and producer.
Kate Nelligan plays Elizabeth Mink, Rachael Crawford is Mary, Peter Outerbridge is Johnson and Winston Rekert is Sherman Clay, the plantation owner who buys Mary.
Ruby Dee plays Indigo, a cook on the Clay plantation; Michael Jai White, who portrayed Mike Tyson in HBO's ``Tyson,'' is her son Elroi, the slave with whom Mary falls in love; and Eric Peterson is Eli Brenneman, a Quaker living in Confederate territory who helps fugitive slaves escape to free states or Canada.
The fictionalized story begins after the marriage. In short order, Johnson rents his wife as a prostitute to other men and takes her to the United States, where he sells her in chains at a slave auction in Richmond.
Mary takes a sheet of Clay's stationery and writes to her parents, but it takes Elroi to get the letter into the postal system. In slave-holding states, slaves were forbidden to learn to read or write, much less pen letters to be sent across international boundaries.
The Minks set out to find Mary, but when they arrive in Hagerstown, Md., Elizabeth realizes that James is in danger and poses as a widow traveling with her servant. He realizes that this is an effective ruse, but it is a humbling moment for the proud, self-made man.
As the story progresses, James Mink returns to the milieu of his father, the ex-slave.
``Going into the Southern states, he realized his roots and what his father had gone through and perhaps who he was,'' Petrie said. ``Lou was fascinated with the development of the character.''
Gossett, a man who knows his own roots, said the evolution of James Mink ``was the reason I grabbed at the part. It was an actor's journey, to go through the underground railway the wrong way. Mink went from being a gentleman of stature to being one of the affluent men of the town and then to becoming his wife's slave.''
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Louis Gossett Jr. and Kate Nelligan star in ``Captiveby CNBHeart: The James Mink Story,'' airing Sunday at 9 p.m. on
WDBJ-Channel 7.