"Green Book" Based on Don Shirley Opens in Theaters

Don Shirley

​Opening in theaters across the United States this week is the movie “Green Book” by Universal Pictures based on the life of Jamaican-American pianist Don Shirley.  The comedy-drama is based on Shirley’s tour of America’s segregated South in the 1960s with his Italian-American bouncer, Tony Lip, who was also his chauffeur. Directed by Peter Farrelly, the screenplay was written by Lip's son, Nick Vallelonga, as well as Farrelly and Brian Hayes Currie. Actor Mahershala Ali stars as Don Shirley and Viggo Mortensen as Tony Lip.

​Green Book had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2018, where it won the People's Choice Award.

​The film is named for “The Negro Motorist Green Book”, usually referred to as "The Green Book", a segregation-era road travel guidebook to help African-Americans dealing with racial discrimination issues and Jim Crow laws, such as whites-only garages, restaurants and hotels refusing services.

A jazz pianist and composer, Donald Shirley was born in Kingston, Jamaica on January 29, 1927. He began playing piano when he was only 2 years old and quickly became a virtuoso performer from an early age. Throughout his musical career, he composed many symphonies and made appearances playing with symphonies that included the Detroit Symphony, the Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the NBC Symphony, and the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington, DC.  He died at age 86 on April 6, 2013, in New York.

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