Mike Bongiorno

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Michael Nicholas Salvatore Bongiorno (known as Mike Bongiorno /maɪk bonˈdʒorno/) was born in New York City, United States on May 26, 1924). He is one of the best known hosts on Italian television.

Of Italian-American origin, he moved to Turin early in life. During World War II he abandoned his studies and joined a group of Italian partisans. He was captured and spent seven months in the San Vittore prison in Milan and was then deported to a German concentration camp. He was liberated before the end of the war due to a POW exchange between the United States and Germany. He returned to New York and in 1946 started work at the radio headquarters of the Il progresso italo-americano newspaper.

Bongiorno returned to Italy in 1953. He appeared in the program Arrivi e Partenze on the TV channel RAI on the very first day of official public TV transmissions in Italy. From 1955 to 1959 he hosted the quiz show Lascia o Raddoppia?, the Italian version of The $64,000 Question. This was the first quiz show on Italian TV, and became one of the most famous Italian TV programs ever^{[citation needed]}. With the success of this program Bongiorno became a household name.

Beginning in 1963 he hosted eleven editions of the Sanremo Festival.

He moved to Tele Milano (now Canale 5), one of the first Italian commercial TV channels owned by Mediaset which is owned by Silvio Berlusconi, to host I sogni nel cassetto. After a brief return to RAI, he continued working for Mediaset quiz programmes Superflash (1982), Telemike (1987), and from 1989 La Ruota della Fortuna (the Italian version of Wheel of Fortune).