Eurovision Song Contest 1969

The Eurovision Song Contest 1969 was the 14th edition of the annual Eurovision Song Contest. It took place in Madrid, Spain, following the country's victory at the 1968 contest with the song "La, la, la" by Massiel. Organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and host broadcaster Televisión Española (TVE), the contest was held at the Teatro Real on Saturday 29 March 1969 and was hosted by Spanish television presenter and actress Laurita Valenzuela.

Eurovision Song Contest 1969
Dates
Final29 March 1969
Host
VenueTeatro Real
Madrid, Spain
Presenter(s)Laurita Valenzuela
Musical directorAugusto Algueró
Directed byRamón Díez
Executive supervisorClifford Brown
Host broadcasterTelevisión Española (TVE)
Interval act"La España diferente" film
Websiteeurovision.tv/event/madrid-1969
Participants
Number of entries16
Debuting countriesNone
Returning countriesNone
Non-returning countries Austria
Participation map
  •      Participating countries     Countries that participated in the past but not in 1969
Vote
Voting systemTen-member juries distributed ten points among their favourite songs.
Nul points in finalNone
Winning song

Sixteen countries took part in the contest with Austria deciding not to participate this year.

At the close of voting, four countries were controversially declared joint-winners: the United Kingdom with "Boom Bang-a-Bang" by Lulu, Spain with "Vivo cantando" by Salomé, the Netherlands with "De troubadour" by Lenny Kuhr, and France with "Un jour, un enfant" by Frida Boccara. It was the first time in the history of the contest that a tie had occurred, and as there was no tiebreaker rule in place at the time, all four countries were declared joint winners.[1] France's win was their fourth, thus making it the first country to win the contest four times. The Netherlands' win was their third. Spain and the United Kingdom each won for the second time, with Spain becoming the first country to win the Eurovision Song Contest twice in a row.

Location
Teatro Real, Madrid – host venue of the 1969 contest.

The venue selected to host the 1969 contest was the Teatro Real, an opera house located in Madrid. The theatre reopened in 1966 as a concert theatre and the main concert venue of the Spanish National Orchestra and the RTVE Symphony Orchestra. The stage featured a metal sculpture created by surrealist Spanish artist Amadeo Gabino.[2]

Format

The surrealist Spanish artist Salvador Dalí was responsible for designing the publicity material for the 1969 contest, resulting in very unusual publicity material for the contest, although very fitting with the times.

It was the first time that the contest resulted in a tie for first place, with four countries each gaining 18 votes. Since there was at the time no rule to cover such an eventuality, all four countries were declared joint winners. This caused an unfortunate problem concerning the medals due to be distributed to the winners as there were not enough to go round, so that only the singers received their medals on the night: the songwriters, to some disgruntlement, were not awarded theirs until some days later.[1] It was the second contest to be filmed and transmitted in colour, even though TVE did not have colour equipment at the time. It had to rent colour TV cameras from the ARD German network. In Spain itself the broadcast was seen in black and white because the local transmitters did not support colour transmissions. The equipment for archiving the broadcast did not arrive in time, so TVE only had a black and white copy of the contest, until a colour copy was discovered in the archives of the NRK.[3]

Participating countries
Further information: List of countries in the Eurovision Song Contest

Austria was absent from the contest,[1] officially because they could not find a suitable representative,[4] but it was rumoured that they refused to participate in a contest staged in Franco-ruled Spain.[5] Wales wanted to debut with Welsh language broadcaster BBC Cymru, and also made a national selection called Cân i Gymru, but in the end it was decided they would not participate in the competition – their participation was rejected because Wales is not a sovereign state. Only the BBC has the exclusive right to represent the United Kingdom.

Conductors

Each performance had a conductor who led the orchestra.[6][7] These are listed below.

Returning artists
Artist Country Previous year(s)
Siw Malmkvist  Germany 1960 (for  Sweden)
Romuald  Luxembourg 1964 (for  Monaco)
Simone de Oliveira  Portugal 1965
Kirsti Sparboe  Norway 1965, 1967
Louis Neefs  Belgium 1967

Results
Draw Country Artist Song Language[8][9] Place[10] Points
01  Yugoslavia Ivan and 4M "Pozdrav svijetu" (Поздрав свијету) Serbo-Croatian 13 5
02  Luxembourg Romuald "Catherine" French 11 7
03  Spain Salomé "Vivo cantando" Spanish 1 18
04  Monaco Jean Jacques "Maman, maman" French 6 11
05  Ireland Muriel Day and the Lindsays "The Wages of Love" English 7 10
06  Italy Iva Zanicchi "Due grosse lacrime bianche" Italian 13 5
07  United Kingdom Lulu "Boom Bang-a-Bang" English 1 18
08  Netherlands Lenny Kuhr "De troubadour" Dutch 1 18
09  Sweden Tommy Körberg "Judy, min vän" Swedish 9 8
10  Belgium Louis Neefs "Jennifer Jennings" Dutch 7 10
11   Switzerland Paola del Medico "Bonjour, Bonjour" German 5 13
12  Norway Kirsti Sparboe "Oj, oj, oj, så glad jeg skal bli" Norwegian 16 1
13  Germany Siw Malmkvist "Primaballerina" German 9 8
14  France Frida Boccara "Un jour, un enfant" French 1 18
15  Portugal Simone de Oliveira "Desfolhada portuguesa" Portuguese 15 4
16  Finland Jarkko and Laura "Kuin silloin ennen" Finnish 12 6

Scoreboard

Although neither jury made any errors in their announcements, scrutineer Clifford Brown asked both the Spanish and the Monegasque juries to repeat their scores. No adjustments were made to the scoring as a result of the repetition.

Lenny Kuhr's dress
Voting results[11][12]
Total score
Yugoslavia
Luxembourg
Spain
Monaco
Ireland
Italy
United Kingdom
Netherlands
Sweden
Belgium
Switzerland
Norway
Germany
France
Portugal
Finland
Contestants
 Yugoslavia 5113
Luxembourg 713111
Spain 18123131322
Monaco 1124221
Ireland 10111313
Italy 511111
United Kingdom 1824315111
Netherlands 182131416
Sweden 81313
Belgium 1023122
Switzerland 132321122
Norway 11
Germany 832111
France 18124421112
Portugal 4211
Finland 6111111

Spokespersons

Listed below is the order in which votes were cast during the 1969 contest along with the spokesperson who was responsible for announcing the votes for their respective country.

  1.  Yugoslavia – Helga Vlahović
  2.  Luxembourg – TBC
  3.  Spain – Ramón Rivera
  4.  Monaco – TBC
  5.  Ireland – John Skehan
  6.  Italy – Mike Bongiorno
  7.  United Kingdom – Colin Ward-Lewis[7]
  8.  Netherlands – Leo Nelissen
  9.  Sweden – Edvard Matz[13]
  10.  Belgium – Eugène Senelle[14]
  11.   Switzerland – Alexandre Burger
  12.  Norway – Janka Polanyi
  13.  Germany – Hans-Otto Grünefeldt
  14.  France – Jean-Claude Massoulier[15]
  15.  Portugal – Maria Manuela Furtado
  16.  Finland – Poppe Berg

Broadcasts

Each national broadcaster also sent a commentator to the contest, in order to provide coverage of the contest in their own native language.

Broadcasters and commentators in participating countries
Country Broadcaster(s) Commentator(s) Ref(s)
 Austria FS1 Willy Kralik
 Belgium RTB French: Paule Herreman
BRT Dutch: Herman Verelst
 Finland TV-ohjelma 1, Yleisohjelma Aarno Walli
 France Deuxième Chaîne ORTF Pierre Tchernia [16]
 Germany Deutsches Fernsehen Hans-Joachim Rauschenbach
 Ireland RTÉ Gay Byrne
RTÉ Radio Kevin Roche
 Italy Secondo Programma Renato Tagliani
 Luxembourg Télé-Luxembourg Jacques Navadic
 Monaco Télé Monte Carlo Pierre Tchernia
 Netherlands Nederland 1 Pim Jacobs [17]
 Norway NRK Sverre Christophersen[lower-alpha 1]
NRK P1 Erik Heyerdahl
 Portugal I Programa Henrique Mendes
 Spain Primera Cadena José Luis Uribarri
Radio Nacional Miguel de los Santos
 Sweden Sveriges TV, SR P3 Christina Hansegård [18]
  Switzerland TV DRS German: Theodor Haller
TSR French: Georges Hardy
TSI Italian: Giovanni Bertini
 United Kingdom BBC1 David Gell [7]
BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 2 Pete Murray [7]
 Yugoslavia Televizija Beograd Serbo-Croatian: Miloje Orlović
Televizija Zagreb Serbo-Croatian: Mladen Delić
Televizija Ljubljana Slovene: Tomaž Terček
Broadcasters and commentators in non-participating countries
Country Broadcaster(s) Commentator(s) Ref(s)
 Brazil TV Tupi Unknown [7]
 Chile Canal 9 Unknown [7]
 Czechoslovakia ČST Unknown [7]
 East Germany Deutscher Fernsehfunk Unknown [7]
 Hungary RTV Unknown [7]
 Mexico TBC Unknown [7]
 Poland TVP Unknown [7]
 Puerto Rico TBC Unknown [7]
 Romania TVR Unknown [7]
 Soviet Union CT USSR Igor Kirillov [7]
 Tunisia RTT Unknown [7]

Notes
  1. Sverre Christophersen was the commentator during the broadcast, however the connection between Madrid and Oslo was disabled slightly midway through the broadcast. Janka Polanyi entered as a temporary commentator before NRK used the commentary from the Swedish feed. Just before the voting began, NRK managed to regain the connection, thus Christophersen was back as commentator.

References
  1. "Eurovision Song Contest 1969". EBU. Retrieved 16 June 2012.
  2. "Cultural Institutions: Teatro Real". esMADRID.com. Archived from the original on 7 September 2009. Retrieved 3 September 2009.
  3. RTVE.es (29 March 2019). "50 años de Eurovisión 1969 | La final de Eurovisión 1969: por primera vez a todo color y con los comentarios de Uribarri". RTVE.es (in Spanish). Retrieved 23 May 2021.
  4. "Eurovisionsfest ohne Österreich". Arbeiter-Zeitung. Vienna, Austria. 15 January 1969.
  5. O'Connor, John Kennedy (2005). The Eurovision Song Contest: The Official History.
  6. "And the conductor is..." Retrieved 10 July 2018.
  7. Roxburgh, Gordon (2012). Songs for Europe: The United Kingdom at the Eurovision Song Contest. Volume One: The 1950s and 1960s. Prestatyn: Telos Publishing. pp. 482–493. ISBN 978-1-84583-065-6.
  8. "Eurovision Song Contest 1969". The Diggiloo Thrush. Retrieved 4 March 2012.
  9. "Eurovision Song Contest 1969". 4Lyrics.eu. Retrieved 16 September 2020.
  10. "Final of Madrid 1969". European Broadcasting Union. Archived from the original on 8 April 2021. Retrieved 8 April 2021.
  11. "Results of the Final of Madrid 1969". European Broadcasting Union. Archived from the original on 8 April 2021. Retrieved 8 April 2021.
  12. "Eurovision Song Contest 1969 – Scoreboard". European Broadcasting Union. Archived from the original on 1 July 2015. Retrieved 14 June 2021.
  13. "Infosajten.com". Infosajten.com. Archived from the original on 18 July 2012. Retrieved 10 August 2012.
  14. "Drieluik Madrid, met een viertal kanshebbers naar het uur H", Emiel Janssens, Gazet van Antwerpen, 29 March 1969
  15. Tchernia, Pierre et al. (29 March 1969). 14ème Concours Eurovision de la Chanson 1969 [14th Eurovision Song Contest 1969] (Television production). Spain: TVE, ORTF (commentary).
  16. Christian Masson. "1969 – Madrid". Songcontest.free.fr. Retrieved 10 August 2012.
  17. "Nederlandse televisiecommentatoren bij het Eurovisie Songfestival". Eurovision Artists (in Dutch).
  18. Thorsson, Leif (2006). Melodifestivalen genom tiderna [Melodifestivalen through time]. Stockholm: Premium Publishing AB. p. 80. ISBN 91-89136-29-2.

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