![]() ![]() The mismatched pair spent one and a half years together on the road-though it’s condensed to just a couple of months in the film- wriggling out of perilous situations and learning about each other’s worlds. As an adult he worked as a bouncer, a maître d’ and and a chauffeur, and he was hired in 1962 to drive Shirley on a concert tour through the Jim Crow South. Vallelonga was born in 1930 to working-class Italian parents and grew up in the Bronx. (African Americans still only make up 1.8 percent of musicians playing in orchestras nationwide, according to a recent study.) But at a time when prominent black classical musicians were few and far between due to racist power structures, he never secured a spot in the upper echelons of the classical world. ![]() He went on to perform regularly at Carnegie Hall-right below his regal apartment-and work with many prestigious orchestras, like the Chicago Symphony and the New York Philharmonic. Shirley was born in 1927 and grew up in a well-off black family in Florida, where he emerged as a classical piano prodigy: he possessed virtuosic technique and a firm grasp of both classical and pop repertoire. Green Book is about the relationship between two real-life people: Donald Shirley and Tony “Lip” Vallelonga. Green Book focuses on an odd couple: Donald Shirley and Tony “Lip” Vallelonga
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