He spoke eight languages fluently, was reputed as an expert painter, and earned a doctorate in psychology. Famed composer Igor Stravinsky himself praised Don Shirley, saying: “His virtuosity is worthy of Gods.”īut he wasn’t just a genius on the piano. He was incredible recognized as one of the best of his time. By 18, he’d made his concert debut, and by 19, he’d performed his first original composition with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. 29, 1927 in Penascola, Florida, he picked up the piano when he was just two years old and studied full-time at the Leningrad Conservatory of Music in the Soviet Union at the age of nine. John Springer Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images Pianist Don Shirley, Circa 1955-1965.ĭon Shirley was one of the greatest pianists in the world. Though the real Don Shirley was notoriously private about his life, we do know what happened in Shirley’s life before and after that much-disputed trip began – and inside his life story, there are perhaps some strong hints about the truth surrounding Green Book. The film, Shirley’s niece says, is nothing more than “a depiction of a white man’s version of a Black man’s life.” None of which, the family insists, is true. It’s a white-savior film, the Shirley family says a movie where a white man teaches a black man how to enjoy fried chicken and his own culture’s music, and which culminates in Tony Lip’s helping Shirley to give up a stuffy classical music show in favor of pop songs in an all-black nightclub. Don Shirley’s family publreicly denounced the film as “full of lies”. He spent years recording interviews with both of the main characters and his script is full of direct quotes from the real men who inspired the movie.Īnd yet, the movie’s release was not without controversy. Vallelonga allegedly made the film with the personal blessings of both Lip and Shirley themselves. Vallelonga perhaps has some credibility in his claim as Tony Lip, after all, was his father. 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. Marks_Records/eBay Don Shirley, as he appears on the cover of his self-titled album, 1957.Įverything in writer Nick Vallelonga’s upcoming film Green Book, he insists, is true.

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