Michael Nicholas Salvatore Bongiorno (; May 26, 1924 – September 8, 2009) was an Italian-American television host. After a few experiences in the US, he started working on RAI in the 1950s and was considered to be the most popular host in Italy. He was also known by the nickname il Re del Quiz ("The Quiz King"), and the peculiarity of starting all his shows with his trademark greeting: Allegria! ("Cheers!", "Joy!"). Early years Bongiorno was born in New York City to parents of Italian descent. He moved to Turin (his mother's native city), when he was young. His father was a Sicilian-American lawyer of partial Arbëreshë origin. 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 an exchange of war prisoners between the United States and Germany. He returned to New York and in 1946 started work at the radio headquarters of Il Progresso Italo-Americano (The Italian-American Progress) newspaper. Career Bongiorno returned to Italy in 1953. He appeared on the first day of official public TV transmissions in Italy with Arrivi e partenze (Arrivals and Departures) on the TV channel RAI . From 1955 to 1959, he hosted the quiz show Lascia o raddoppia?, the Italian version of USA's The $64,000 Question. Another program was Campanile Sera (Bell Tower Evening, 1959–1962), in which southern and northern Italian towns challenged each other with questions, and practical games played by citizens in the same towns. In 1963, Umberto Eco wrote an essay entitled Phenomenology of Mike Bongiorno, a bestseller in which he used advanced academic theories to shed light on Mike Bongiorno and his way of communicating. Eco held that Bongiorno was so good at portraying himself as no better than average in every respect that 100% of his audience could feel good about themselves. Beginning in 1963, he hosted the first of eleven editions of the Sanremo Festival. Then he hosted the quiz programs Caccia al numero (Number Hunt, 1962), La Fiera dei Sogni (Dream Fair, 1962–1965) and Giochi in Famiglia (Games in Family, 1966–1969). But the greatest success came with the quiz program Rischiatutto (1970–1974), an adapted Italian version of Jeopardy!, with 20 to 30 million watchers every Thursday