Shirley's career in classical, jazz, and even popular music — he released a Billboard Top 40 hit, "Water Boy" — included turns on the world's most prestigious stages, including a performance with Duke Ellington, and playing Gershwin at the Metropolitan Opera in New York accompanied by the Alvin Ailey company. Shirley received a doctorate of music, psychology, and liturgical arts, and mastered eight languages (which he spoke fluently, naturally). As for Shirley's sprawling apartment above Carnegie Hall? That actually existed and was where he resided until his 2013 death at age 86 after complications from heart disease.
Following the movie's release, Shirley's family has since refuted much of what transpires in Green Book concerning Don. Maurice Shirley, Don's younger and last living brother, spoke to NPR's 1A Movie Club host Joshua Johnson, who relayed that Maurice "says he refuses to see the film because it is, in his words, 'full of lies.' He also said that, unlike in the film, Dr. Shirley was not estranged from his family or the Black community. He says [Dr. Shirley] had definitely eaten fried chicken before [meeting Tony Lip.]"
Carol Shirley Kimble, Shirley's niece, reiterated what her uncle said in a voicemail left for 1A producers. "There was no due diligence done to afford my family and my deceased uncle the respect of properly representing him, his legacy, his worth and the excellence in which he operated and the excellence in which he lived," she said. "It's once again a depiction of a white man's version of a Black man's life."
