Eurovision Song Contest 1967
The Eurovision Song Contest 1967 was the 12th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest, held on 8 April 1967 at the Großer Festsaal der Wiener Hofburg in Vienna, Austria, and presented by Erica Vaal. It was organised by the European Broadcasting Union and host broadcaster ORF, who staged the event after winning the for with the song "Merci, Chérie" 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 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 votes 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 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 "Merci, Chérie" 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, and it currently serves as the official residence of the President of Austria.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.
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". 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 "Non pensare a me", but the song was disqualified due to being commercially released too early, and was replaced with "Non andare più lontano".
| Country | Broadcaster | Artist | Song | Language | Songwriter | Conductor |
| ORF | Peter Horton | "Warum es hunderttausend Sterne gibt" | German | Johannes Fehring | ||
| BRT | Louis Neefs | "Ik heb zorgen" | Dutch | Francis Bay | ||
| YLE | Fredi | "Varjoon – suojaan" | Finnish | Ossi Runne | ||
| ORTF | Noëlle Cordier | "Il doit faire beau là-bas" | 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 | "Non andare più lontano" | Italian | Giancarlo Chiaramello | ||
| CLT | Vicky | "L'amour est bleu" | French | Claude Denjean | ||
| TMC | Minouche Barelli | "Boum-Badaboum" | French | Aimé Barelli | ||
| NTS | Thérèse Steinmetz | "Ringe-dinge" | Dutch | Dolf van der Linden | ||
| NRK | Kirsti Sparboe | "Dukkemann" | Norwegian | Øivind Bergh | ||
| RTP | Eduardo Nascimento | "O vento mudou" | Portuguese | |||
| TVE | Raphael | "Hablemos del amor" | Spanish | Manuel Alejandro | Manuel Alejandro | |
| SR | Östen Warnerbring | "Som en dröm" | Swedish | Mats Olsson | ||
| SRG SSR | Géraldine | "Quel cœur vas-tu briser ?" | French | |||
| BBC | Sandie Shaw | "Puppet on a String" | English | Kenny Woodman | ||
| JRT | "Vse rože sveta" | 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.| Country | Artist | Song | Votes | Place | |
| 1 | "Ringe-dinge" | 2 | 14 | ||
| 2 | Vicky | "L'amour est bleu" | 17 | 4 | |
| 3 | Peter Horton | "Warum es hunderttausend Sterne gibt" | 2 | 14 | |
| 4 | "Il doit faire beau là-bas" | 20 | 3 | ||
| 5 | "O vento mudou" | 3 | 12 | ||
| 6 | Géraldine | "Quel cœur vas-tu briser ?" | 0 | 17 | |
| 7 | "Som en dröm" | 7 | 8 | ||
| 8 | Fredi | "Varjoon – suojaan" | 3 | 12 | |
| 9 | "Anouschka" | 7 | 8 | ||
| 10 | "Ik heb zorgen" | 8 | 7 | ||
| 11 | "Puppet on a String" | 47 | 1 | ||
| 12 | Raphael | "Hablemos del amor" | 9 | 6 | |
| 13 | "Dukkemann" | 2 | 14 | ||
| 14 | "Boum-Badaboum" | 10 | 5 | ||
| 15 | "Vse rože sveta" | 7 | 8 | ||
| 16 | "Non andare più lontano" | 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
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.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.
| Country | Broadcaster | Channel | Commentator | |
 Czechoslovakiaill|I. program|cs|lt=ČSTefn|Delayed broadcast on 9 April 1967 at 20:15 ill|Vladimír Dvořák |lt=Vladimír Dvořák|cz|Vladimír Dvořák |