Is Green Book Based on a True Story?
Is Green Book Based on a True Story? Yes, but the Movie Definitely Takes Some Liberties
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In real life, Lip was a minor-league baseball player and soldier in the Army who eventually became a manager at Copacabana. When he came back from the road trip, a chance run-in with Francis Ford Coppola landed him a bit part in The Godfather, which he used to score acting gigs in other projects. His last onscreen appearances were in HBO's The Sopranos, where he played mobster Carmine Lupertazzi, and the 2008 action flick Stiletto.
Lip's son, Nick Vallelonga (pictured above with his father), revealed at the Toronto International Film Festival that Lip and Shirley continued to travel together after they returned. "They went on for another year together and went to Canada too," he said. "My father's a character, you can't make him up, everything in there you saw was true. A lot of the words were right from his mouth when he was telling the story from when I taped him, a lot of the dialogue was right from there."
Lip and his wife Dolores moved from the city to Paramus, New Jersey, where Dolores died in 1999. He followed in 2013 at age 82, and is survived by Nick, as well as his other son Frank Vallelonga Jr., brother Rudy Vallelonga, and his one grandson.