The Eurovision Song Contest 1967 was the 12th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest, held on 8 April 1967 at the in Vienna, Austria, and presented by Erica Vaal. It was organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and host broadcaster (ORF), who staged the event after winning the for with the song "" by Udo Jürgens. It was the first contest held in the month of April.

Broadcasters from 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 returning until .

The winner was the with the song "Puppet on a String", written and composed by Bill Martin and Phil Coulter, and performed by Sandie Shaw. This was the first British win and the entry had one of the widest margins of victory ever witnessed in the competition; it garnered more than twice as many votes as the runner up. , , and rounded out the top five, with Ireland achieving their best result to date.

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

Location

(ORF) staged the 1967 contest in Vienna, after winning the for with the song "" by Udo Jürgens. The venue selected was the Festival Hall of the Hofburg Palace. With its of floor space, the Festival Hall is the largest room in the entire palace complex and was originally built as a throne room, but was never used as such. The Hofburg Palace 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. and it currently serves as the official residence of the President of Austria.

At early stages of production, the Ronacher was considered as venue for the 1967 contest.

Participants

Broadcasters from seventeen countries participated in the 1967 contest. Of the eighteen countries that participated in 1966 only was absent. (DR) 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 of the television entertainment department thought that the money could be spent in a better way.

The contest featured three representatives who had previously performed as lead artists for the same country. Claudio Villa had represented , Kirsti Sparboe had represented , and Raphael had represented .

Despite being a popular winning song for the United Kingdom, singer Sandie Shaw intensely disliked the composition, though her attitude towards the song somewhat mellowed in later years, even releasing a new version in 2007.

The entry from Luxembourg, "", 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". Portugal was represented by Eduardo Nascimento, who was the first black male singer in the history of the contest. After winning the Sanremo Music Festival 1967, Italian participant Claudio Villa was due to perform the song "", but it was disqualified due to being commercially released before the deadline set by the EBU, and was replaced with "".

+ Eurovision Song Contest 1967 participants Country Broadcaster Artist Song Language Songwriter(s) Conductor ORF Peter Horton "" German Johannes Fehring BRT Louis Neefs "" Dutch Francis Bay YLE Fredi "" Finnish Ossi Runne ORTF Noëlle Cordier "" French Franck Pourcel HR Inge Brück "Anouschka" German Hans Blum Hans Blum RTÉ Sean Dunphy "If I Could Choose" English Noel Kelehan RAI Claudio Villa "" Italian Giancarlo Chiaramello CLT Vicky "" French Claude Denjean TMC Minouche Barelli "Boum-Badaboum" French Aimé Barelli NTS Thérèse Steinmetz "Ringe-dinge" Dutch Dolf van der Linden NRK Kirsti Sparboe "" Norwegian Øivind Bergh RTP Eduardo Nascimento "" Portuguese TVE Raphael "" Spanish Manuel Alejandro Manuel Alejandro SR Östen Warnerbring "" Swedish Mats Olsson SRG SSR Géraldine "" French BBC Sandie Shaw "Puppet on a String" English Kenny Woodman JRT "" Slovene

Format Following the confirmation of the seventeen competing countries, the draw to determine the running order of the contest was held on 21 March 1967.

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.

Contest overview

The contest took place on 8 April 1967, beginning at 22:00 CET. + Results of the Eurovision Song Contest 1967 Country Artist Song Votes Place 1 "Ringe-dinge" 2 14 2 Vicky "" 17 4 3 Peter Horton "" 2 14 4 "" 20 3 5 "" 3 12 6 Géraldine "" 0 17 7 "" 7 8 8 Fredi "" 3 12 9 "Anouschka" 7 8 10 "" 8 7 11 "Puppet on a String" 47 1 12 Raphael "" 9 6 13 "" 2 14 14 "Boum-Badaboum" 10 5 15 "" 7 8 16 "" 4 11 17 "If I Could Choose" 22 2

Spokespersons Each participating broadcaster appointed a spokesperson who was responsible for announcing the votes for its respective country via telephone. Known spokespersons at the 1967 contest are listed below.

Gay Byrne

Michael Aspel

Detailed voting results

Every participating broadcaster assembled a jury panel of ten people. Every jury member could give one vote to his or her favourite song, except that representing their own country. This means that any song could receive a maximum of 10 votes from a national jury, but none achieved this. The highest number of votes a song received from a jury was seven, received by the song from the United Kingdom three times (from the juries of Norway, Switzerland, and France). The Portuguese jury gave eight songs only one vote, and one song (the Spanish one) two votes.

The voting sequence was one of the more chaotic in Eurovision history; the students from the University of Vienna 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 last jury to vote, the Irish jury.

+ Detailed voting results scope="col" scope="col" scope="col" scope="col" scope="col" scope="col" scope="col" scope="col" scope="col" scope="col" scope="col" scope="col" scope="col" scope="col" scope="col" scope="col" scope="col" scope="col" rowspan="17" Netherlands 2 1 1 Luxembourg 17 4 2 1 2 1 1 1 3 2 Austria 2 1 1 France 20 1 2 1 1 4 2 2 2 4 1 Portugal 3 1 1 1 Switzerland 0 Sweden 7 1 1 2 1 2 Finland 3 1 1 1 Germany 7 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Belgium 8 1 3 1 1 1 1 United Kingdom 47 2 5 3 7 1 7 1 2 3 3 7 3 2 1 Spain 9 1 1 1 2 1 2 1 Norway 2 1 1 Monaco 10 2 1 1 5 1 Yugoslavia 7 1 1 1 1 2 1 Italy 4 1 1 1 1 Ireland 22 1 3 1 2 2 4 3 2 2 1 1

Broadcasts

Each participating broadcaster was required to relay the contest via its networks. Non-participating EBU member broadcasters were also able to relay the contest as "passive participants". Broadcasters were able to send commentators to provide coverage of the contest in their own native language and to relay information about the artists and songs to their television viewers. Reports estimated the global viewership to be 150 to 350 million viewers.

Known details on the broadcasts in each country, including the specific broadcasting stations and commentators are shown in the tables below. In addition to the participating countries, the contest was also reportedly broadcast in Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland and the Soviet Union via Intervision.

+ Broadcasters and commentators in participating countries Country Broadcaster Channel(s) Commentator(s) ORF FS1 Emil Kollpacher BRT BRT RTB RTB Paule Herreman RTB 3 YLE , ORTF , France Inter Pierre Tchernia ARD RTÉ RTÉ Brendan O'Reilly RTÉ Radio Kevin Roche RAI CLT NTS VARA NRK , NRK Erik Diesen RTP RTP TVE TVE 1, TVE Canarias RNE RNE SR , SR P3 SRG SSR TV DRS TSR, Robert Burnier TSI Radio Bern BBC BBC1 Rolf Harris BFBS BFBS Radio Thurston Holland JRT

+ Broadcasters and commentators in non-participating countries Country Broadcaster Channel(s) Commentator(s) ČST MTV MTV TP TVR TVR

Notes

References

External links