Search results
Jan 29, 2021 · The film 'Green Book' is based on a real-life road trip taken by Black pianist Don Shirley and white bouncer Tony Lip and the unlikely friendship that resulted from the journey.
Nov 19, 2018 · A fact-check of Green Book reveals that, in this case, the movie is honest in its portrayal of Lip. According to Lip's son, Nick Vallelonga, Lip had indeed been racist before his trip with musician Don Shirley, attributing it to growing up on the Italian-American streets of the Bronx.
His life in the early 1960s, when he was the driver and bodyguard for the black classical pianist Don Shirley, was dramatized in the 2018 film Green Book, in which he was portrayed by Viggo Mortensen. The film won numerous accolades, including the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Nov 26, 2018 · His unlikely companion and chauffeur on the 1962 tour was Tony “Lip” Vallelonga—an Italian-American bouncer who had been working in New York City’s Copacabana club.
Nov 26, 2018 · The film follows pianist Don Shirley and he travels through the Deep South in the era of Jim Crow and forms a friendship with his driver, white, Italian-American bouncer, Tony Lip. Vallelonga perhaps has some credibility in his claim as Tony Lip, after all, was his father.
Starring Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali, the film is inspired by the true story of a 1962 tour of the Deep South by African American pianist Don Shirley and Italian American bouncer and later actor Frank "Tony Lip" Vallelonga, who served as Shirley's driver and bodyguard.
When the trio set out on another tour later that year, Shirley hired a white driver, a gregarious Italian-American bouncer known as Tony Lip, to handle problems that might arise in the “sundown...
