Eurovision Song Contest 1967

The Eurovision Song Contest 1967 was the 12th edition of the annual Eurovision Song Contest. It took place in Vienna, Austria, following the country's victory at the with the song "Merci, Chérie" by Udo Jürgens. Organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and host broadcaster Österreichischer Rundfunk (ORF), the contest was held at the Großer Festsaal der Wiener Hofburg on 8 April 1967, becoming the first contest held in the month of April, and was hosted by Austrian actress Erica Vaal.

Seventeen countries participated in the contest, one fewer than the record eighteen that had competed in the and editions. decided not to enter and left the contest at this point, not to return until .

The won the contest for the first time with the song " Puppet on a String", written and composed by Bill Martin and Phil Coulter, and performed by Sandie Shaw. The entry had one of the widest margins of victory ever witnessed in the competition; it garnered more than twice as many points as the second-placed song. Shaw intensely disliked the composition, though her attitude towards the song somewhat mellowed in later years, even releasing a new version in 2007.

This was the last contest to be transmitted only in black and white as it would begin to be transmitted in colour from the edition onwards.

Location

The 1967 Eurovision Song Contest was held in Vienna, the capital of Austria. The venue for the contest was the Festival Hall of the Hofburg Palace, which was the principal winter residence of the Habsburg dynasty, rulers of the Austro-Hungarian empire.Aeiou-Hofburg-English
, "Hofburg, Wien" (history), ''Encyclopedia of Austria'', Aeiou Project, 2006. It currently serves as the official residence of the President of Austria.

Format

The stage setup was a little unusual this year. There was a staircase in the middle of the stage as well as two revolving mirrored walls on both ends of the stage; they began revolving at the start of each song, and stopped at its end. A change in rule also required half of every nation's jury to be less than 30 years old.

The presenter Erica Vaal became confused whilst the voting was taking place, and declared the United Kingdom's entry to be the winner before the last country, , had announced its votes. She also ended the programme by congratulating the winning song and country, and saying "goodbye" in several different languages.

Participating countries

Denmark chose not to participate this year and left the contest at this point, not to be returning again until 1978. The reason was that the new director for the TV entertainment department at DR thought that the money could be spent in a better way.

The entry from Luxembourg, "L'amour est bleu", sung by Vicky Leandros, came in fourth; nonetheless, it went on to become one of the biggest hits of the 1967 contest, and a year later would be a big instrumental hit for French musician, Paul Mauriat, under the English title, "Love is Blue".
Television presenter, artist and musician Rolf Harris provided the commentary for BBC Television viewers. Switzerland received zero votes for the second time. Portugal was represented by Eduardo Nascimento, who was the first black male singer in the history of the contest, performing "O vento mudou" ("The wind changed"). Rumours claimed that Portuguese prime minister Salazar had chosen this particular singer to show the rest of Europe that he was not racist.

Conductors

Each performance had a conductor who was maestro of the orchestra. This was the first contest to have a unique conductor for every entry, as prior contests usually had the host conductor conduct multiple entries in addition to their own country’s entry.

* Dolf van der Linden
* Claude Denjean
* Johannes Fehring
* Franck Pourcel
*
*
* Mats Olsson
* Ossi Runne
* Hans Blum
* Francis Bay
* Kenny Woodman
* Manuel Alejandro
* Øivind Bergh
* Aimé Barelli
*
* Giancarlo Chiaramello
* Noel Kelehan

Returning artists

Participants and results

Detailed voting results

The voting sequence was one of the more chaotic in Eurovision history; the students from Vienna University who were operating the scoreboard made several errors during the telecast, which were corrected by the scrutineer. Hostess Erica Vaal also began to announce the winner before realising she had excluded the Irish jury.

Spokespersons

Listed below is the order in which votes were cast during the 1967 contest along with the spokesperson who was responsible for announcing the votes for their respective country.

# Corry Brokken
# TBC
#
# André Claveau
# Maria Manuela Furtado
#
#
#
# Anaid Iplicjian
# Eugène Senelle
# Michael Aspel
# Margarita Nicola
#
# TBC
# Saša Novak
# Mike Bongiorno
# Gay Byrne

Broadcasts

Each national broadcaster also sent a commentator to the contest, in order to provide coverage of the contest in their own native language. In addition to the participating countries, the contest was also reportedly broadcast in Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland and the Soviet Union via Intervision.

References

External links

*

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1967
Music festivals in Austria
1960s in Vienna
1967 in Austria
1967 in music
April 1967 events in Europe
Events in Vienna