A world-class African American pianist. An Italian-American bodyguard from Pennsylvania. Their trip through the Deep South in the early 1960s is the basis for Academy Award-nominated film Green Book.
The bodyguard, Tony “Lip” Vallelonga, became the chauffeur for Dr. Don Shirley, a piano prodigy who collected two honorary degrees and made his concert debut at 18 playing Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat. In 1962, Vallelonga became the person tasked with getting Shirley safely to his tour stops in the Jim Crow South.
In the film, Vallelonga and Shirley are portrayed by Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali, respectively. The film is named after The Negro Motorist Green Book, a guidebook for black travelers to help them find lodging and restaurants that would accept them.
Despite Nat King Cole being brutally attacked on stage in Alabama just six years earlier, Shirley went forward with a tour of whites-only venues because “he refused to be told...what he could play where.”
Shirley, born Donald Walbridge Shirley, was born in 1927 in Pensacola. His parents were Jamaican immigrants and promoters often billed him as being from Jamaica as well. He learned to play piano at age 2 and made his concert debut at 18.
Even after garnering fame and his honorary degrees, a manager told him American audiences weren’t yet ready for a “colored” pianist. That was Sol Hurok, the impresario who helped Marian Anderson “break the color line as an operatic diva.”
The New York Times said Shirley, who died at age 86 in 2013, had his own genre. Shirley ended up taking Hurok’s advice and made his career playing a mix of popular music and jazz and creating his own sound by melding them with classical styles.
Green Book gives a glimpse into Shirley’s life even while much of it still remains a mystery.
The film, made mostly by white filmmakers without input from Shirley’s family, has received some backlash. Shirley’s niece recently called the film “a depiction of a white man’s version of a black man’s life.”
Critics have also said the project puts too much emphasis on Vallelonga’s story.
However, the co-writer of Green Book, the nonfiction book on which the film is based, recently told Variety that Shirley himself told him to not speak to anyone about his life.
Vallelonga’s son, Nick Vallelonga, told Variety, “They were together a year and a half and they did remain friends.” Co-writer Brian Hayes Currie also said the movie and book are only “a two-month window” and not “the biography of Don Shirley.”
“There’s a lot of information (the Shirley family) doesn’t have, and they were hurt that I didn’t speak to them,” Nick Vallelonga said. “But to be quite honest with you, Don Shirley himself told me not to speak to anyone. And he only wanted certain parts of his life. He only allowed me to tell what happened on the trip.”
Last month, Mahershala Ali, who portrays Shirley in the film, responded to the backlash saying has to "look at what (he is) doing and be responsible for it."
Backstage at the Golden Globes, Ali said he had spoken to Shirley's family and the studio and "at the end of the day you wish everyone was happy and you don't want to offend anyone in any capacity."
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