Milan, 24 May 2024 – The courteous tone and the elegant style are paternal legacies. Nicolò Bongiorno, director, screenwriter, film producer, is Mike’s second son and the president of the Mike Bongiorno Foundation.
Are the initiatives starting for the centenary of Mike’s birth?
“Poste Italiane has created a stamp that will be presented on Sunday, with an illustrative booklet in collaboration with the Mike Bongiorno Foundation. My mother will talk about it on ‘Domenica in’. At the end of the year, the miniseries that Rai 1 is making in Turin will be broadcast. There will be a traveling exhibition, the first stop on September 17th in Milan, at Palazzo Reale. Then he will go to Turin, to other cities and to the United States, where Mike was the most popular Italian-American.”
Mike Sr.
“I remember that for the 20th birthday of Leonardo, the youngest of us three children, my father wrote him a letter. In his 20s he had known war and imprisonment. A great act of love, like a message from one generation to the next. My father was dedicated to his profession but very close to the family. His adherence to the work was total and at the same time we felt his presence, being his parent. A strong father, sometimes even severe, who knew how to be sweet. I have wonderful memories of our travels, especially in the USA.”
As the children of a father who was a kind of living legend, did you ever feel different from your peers?
“Absolutely not. For us he was a normal father. Of course our school friends who talked about it, the people who stopped him on the street, could make us feel different, but for us he was the father. Seeing him on TV was normal: dad is at work. The surname Bongiorno has never weighed on us. In reverse. It was a pleasure to see the affection he received. An affection that is still alive.”
Did Mike suffer from feeling underestimated, looked at almost with disdain by certain critics, by certain intellectual circles?
“It certainly displeased him, especially in the ’50s and ’60s. He feared that he wouldn’t last long as a TV personality in a world like that of entertainment where you always have to reinvent yourself. Instead, he had a very long career, more than 50 years. And in any case a great intellectual like Umberto Eco wrote an essay on the ‘phenomenology of Mike Bongiorno’ which had great resonance”.
Was there rivalry with colleagues?
“I have never heard him make a comment, a rumor about any of his colleagues. He was always very correct. Even the famous rivalry between Mike and Pippo Baudo did not exist. They were friends. They could be heard, they could be seen. Baudo came to us in Milan, he brought gifts, oranges. There was affection, something that went beyond the professional aspect. He often saw himself with Fiorello and Fazio. He had done some commercials with Fiorello”.
Had he remained in contact with any of his quiz contestants?
“I believe that over time he remained in contact with Gianluigi Marianini, one of the characters made famous by ‘Leave or double?’ and that they met again. The same for Giuliana Longari, champion of ‘Rischiatutto’, who then worked in Rai”.
What was your most delicate, most difficult moment?
“He was lucky enough to always work. Perhaps, in recent times, when he was of a certain age, the relationship with Mediaset had become a little more complicated. He also spoke about it to Fazio. He was deciding what to do. He was waiting for answers that never came. There have been months of waiting. In the end he understood that it was time to leave for a new adventure, this time with Sky. The program should have been called Riskytutto. A project that thrilled him, which animated the last period of his life. He was still full of energy, unable to remain inactive.”
And how does today’s public see it?
“The Foundation continues to receive letters and messages. People who look for him on TV because a life memory is linked to his figure, to one of his programmes. The other day they wrote to us: ‘I’m looking for anything about Mike on the Internet, to see him, under the illusion that he is still alive’”.
There is no question that in another hundred years we will still be talking about Mike Bongiorno. As?
“As of a man who represented many things for the country. He was not a politician, but he was a father of the country.”
