"The Green Book" -- A road movie that illustrates the absurdity of the Jim Crow South

Hollywood loves a road picture, where two buddies hit the road and find adventure.  "Green Book" is just such a movie, although the two principle characters are not exactly buddies, not in the beginning.  In fact, they couldn't be more different.

Tony Vallelonga (a.k.a. Tony Lip) is a white street-smart loudmouth Bronx native who earns his living as a bouncer at the Copacabana Nightclub.  He is also prejudiced against black people, which is clearly demonstrated in the first act.  When he finds himself out of work (while the Copa undergoes refurbishing), he interviews for a job for a black classically-trained pianist named Dr. Don Shirley.  The job entails driving from city to city in the Deep South at the height of Jim  Crow.  In each city, Dr. Shirley performed on piano for appreciative wealthy white southerners.  While they welcome his cultured music making, they won't allow him to eat in their restaurants, or even use their public restrooms.  The film is named after "The Negro Motorist Green Book," a guidebook for African-American  travelers, by Victor Hugo Green.  The book lists restaurants and hotels throughout the Jim Crow South that actually welcomed black travelers.

Set in 1962, the film is based on a true story. It was written by Vallelonga's son, Nick Vallelonga, based on interviews with Dr. Shirley, as well as the many letters his father wrote home while on the road.  Contributing to the screenplay were director Peter Farrell, and screenwriter Brian Hayes Currie.

Many of the letters were written with the help of erudite Dr. Shirley, as Tony Lip is lost when it comes to composing a simple English sentence.    With Dr. Shirley's help, Tony improves his writing skills to the point where, by the end of the movie, Tony no longer needs help.  The letters reached home and touched the heart of his wife, family, and friends, who were impressed  by his newfound eloquence.

While Tony Lip fractures the English language every time he opens his mouth, button-down Dr. Shirley speaks flawless English. In fact, he's better mannered and more cultured than many of the elite whites he encounters in the concert halls and elegant homes where he is paid well to perform.  He also is confronted by a great deal of trouble because of his skin, which is why he hired tough-guy Tony Lip as his body-guard and driver. Not only does Tony rescue Dr. Shirley from a number of scrapes, the pair developed a close friendship that would last many years.

On the road, while listening on the radio to the songs of Little Richard, Aretha Franklin, Sam Cook and Chubby Checker, Tony realizes the highly educated Dr. Shirley, is not only unfamiliar with Black American Pop music, but is unfamiliar with Black Culture as well.  Tony tells him that he's more black than Dr. Shirley.  This becomes a point of contention between the two that comes to a head when the pair are arrested as the result of Tony's assault on a Southern police officer who had offended his Italian heritage as "half-nigger."   After being released from jail (with a phone call from Attorney General Robert Kennedy), Dr. Shirley explodes at the very notion that Tony Lip is somehow more black than he is, when he couldn't handle the slightest bit of race baiting.  "What you felt tonight I experience every day," he says.  "Rich white people pay me to play piano for them because it makes them feel cultured.  But as soon as I step off the stage, I go right back to being just another nigger to them, because that is their true culture. And I suffer that slight alone.  But I am not accepted by own people, because I'm not like them either."  For once loudmouth Tony has no response.  His facial expression tells all; he's wounded by Dr. Shirley's blunt talk of what it feels like to be a black man in white America.

One of the strong points of the film is how well it illustrates the absurdity of the Jim Crow race laws and how it affected simple human decency between peoples of differing colors.  In this regard, a number of scenes stand out.  One in particular is where Dr. Shirley is prepared to buy an expensive suit from a men's clothing store in Macon, Georgia, but is turned down.  The callow salesman not only loses the sale of an expensive suit, as Dr. Shirley  turns and exits the store but Tony was going to buy him a tie as well, but puts the tie back on the rack and follows Dr. Shirley out of the store.  Another is where Dr. Shirley is refused service at a restaurant where he is scheduled to perform--two days before the most-Christian of Holidays. This takes place in Birmingham, Alabama--at the time the most racially-divided city of the Deep South.  Refusing to perform unless allowed to dine in their restaurant, he walks out.  Where does he go? To a bar-and-grill down the street where the clientele is racially mixed, and where he performs for free for an appreciative and enthusiastic audience.  As if to top the scene. the band joins him midway through the performance, and button-down Don Shirley rises to his feet and plays piano more like Little Richard than the classically trained musician he is.  It's the highlight of the move.

The movie won an Oscar for Best Picture of 2018, and an Oscar for Mahershala Ali, who plays Dr. Shirley, as best supporting actor.

Tony "Lip" Vallelonga went back to his job at the Copacabana, eventually to become Maitre D.

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