Eurovision Song Contest 1958

The Eurovision Song Contest 1958 was the third edition of the annual Eurovision Song Contest. It took place in Hilversum, Netherlands, following Corry Brokken's win at the 1957 contest in Frankfurt-am-Main, West Germany, with the song "Net als toen". This formed the convention that the winning country of the previous year's event would host the following year. The contest was held at the AVRO Studios on Wednesday 12 March 1958, and was hosted by Hannie Lips. It was the first Eurovision Song Contest held in a Benelux country.

Eurovision Song Contest 1958
Dates
Final	12 March 1958
Host
Venue	AVRO Studios Hilversum, Netherlands
Presenter(s)	Hannie Lips
Conductor	Dolf van der Linden
Host broadcaster	Nederlandse Televisie Stichting (NTS)
Interval act	Metropole Orkest
Website	eurovision.tv/event/hilversum-1958
Participants
Number of entries	10
Debuting countries	Sweden
Returning countries	None
Non-returning countries	United Kingdom
Participation map      Participating countries     Countries that participated in the past but not in 1958
Vote
Voting system	Ten-member juries distributed 10 points among their favourite songs.
Nul points	None
Winning song	France "Dors, mon amour"

Ten countries participated in the contest, equalling the number in the previous edition. Sweden made its debut, while the United Kingdom withdrew.

The winner was France with the song "Dors, mon amour", performed by André Claveau, written by Pierre Delanoë and composed by Hubert Giraud. This was France's first victory in the contest. At 46 years and 76 days of age, Claveau became the oldest winner of the contest until 1990.[1]

Along with 1956, it was the second contest (and last contest to date) that has not featured a single song in the English language. The 1958 contest continued with the policy implemented the year before where each country was limited to one song entry. This policy has been retained to date.[2]

Location

AVRO Studios, Hilversum - host venue of the 1958 contest.

Hilversum, a municipality and a town in the province of North Holland, is known as the "Media Capital" of the Netherlands.[2] Hilversum had become the centre of broadcasting and radio in the Netherlands in the 1920s when Dutch radio company Nederlandse Seintoestellen Fabriek settled there, and today the media sector stands as one of the top employers in the municipality of Hilversum.[3]

After the establishment of the Dutch Radio Company in Hilversum in the 1920s, almost all other radio stations in the Netherlands followed suit with television following in the 1950s, thus making Hilversum at the end of the 1950s the best venue in the Netherlands to produce and broadcast such an international TV-transmitted event as the Eurovision Song Contest, while on the other hand TV was still a challenging advanced technology in general within Europe.

One such media network was the host of the event, Nederlandse Televisie Stichting. The venue of the contest was the studio of AVRO (Algemene Vereniging Radio Omroep or "General Association of Radio Broadcasting"), a building complex for the media's network among the media buildings within Hilversum, and which belonged to the Dutch public broadcasting association operating within the framework of the Nederlandse Publieke Omroep system.

Format

The contest was held in one of the Avro studio halls. The hall contained a very small stage to function as a slightly higher stand for the singers, with the program being shot from the stage floor up. Outside of frame were the microphones' and other technical devices' wires which went through the studio's lower floor at the foot of the stage. The decorative emphasis was on the stage background, the stage front and the left side from the stage from the spectator's view where the orchestra and where the performers and host's stairway entrance were located. The rear of the stage had interchangeable backgrounds for each song to add context to each song's lyrics. The centre-front of the stage, the left area from the stage with the orchestra and stairway entrance were decorated with tulips, of which the Netherlands are known for.[2]

The juries were not in the studio as in 1956. For the 1958 event, they remained in their own countries, listening to the event. Once the songs had all been sung, juries announced their results via telephone in reverse order of presentation, as in the previous year. The Italian entry was not picked up properly in some of the other countries, which meant that after all the other songs had been presented, Domenico Modugno had to perform his song again. It was the only year that the host country finished in last place until 57 years later in 2015 and again in 2018, and the first time more than one country was placed last. The interval act was music by the Metropole Orkest, under the direction of maestro Dolf van der Linden. There were two interval acts, one in the middle of the competing songs performances and one after all the rest of the competing performances were shown.

Participating countries

Further information: List of countries in the Eurovision Song Contest

Sweden, a country that would later be one of the most successful in the contest, debuted this year. The United Kingdom decided to withdraw from the contest after initially planning to submit an entry.[4]

After the contest, the Italian entry "Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu" (subsequently known as "Volare") by Domenico Modugno went on to become a worldwide hit. During the 1st Annual Grammy Awards, held on 4 May 1959 at Hollywood's Beverly Hilton Hotel, "Nel blu dipinto di blu" received two awards, for Record of the Year and Song of the Year.[5] The song is the only foreign-language recording to achieve this honour,[6] and it is the only song to have competed in the Eurovision Song Contest and received a Grammy Award.[7] The song also reached the No.1 spot in the US-American Billboard Charts, making it one of the most successful Eurovision songs in the history of the contest. The song was also voted the second best Eurovision entry of all time at the 50th anniversary show "Congratulations" in 2005.

Conductors

Each performance had a conductor who conducted the orchestra.[8][9]

•  Italy – Alberto Semprini
•  Netherlands – Dolf van der Linden
•  France – Franck Pourcel
•  Luxembourg – Dolf van der Linden
•  Sweden – Dolf van der Linden
•  Denmark – Kai Mortensen
•  Belgium – Dolf van der Linden
•  Germany – Dolf van der Linden
•  Austria – Willy Fantl
•   Switzerland – Paul Burkhard

Returning artists

Four artists who had participated in previous editions of the contest returned in 1958: Fud Leclerc, who also represented Belgium in 1956; Margot Hielscher for Germany, who also participated in 1957; Corry Brokken for the Netherlands, who participated in 1956 and won in 1957; and Lys Assia, who won the first contest in 1956 and participated in 1957.

Results

Draw	Country	Artist	Song	Language[10]	Place	Points
01	Italy	Domenico Modugno	"Nel blu dipinto di blu"	Italian	3	13
02	Netherlands	Corry Brokken	"Heel de wereld"	Dutch	9	1
03	France	André Claveau	"Dors, mon amour"	French	1	27
04	Luxembourg	Solange Berry	"Un grand amour"	French	9	1
05	Sweden	Alice Babs	"Lilla stjärna"	Swedish	4	10
06	Denmark	Raquel Rastenni	"Jeg rev et blad ud af min dagbog"	Danish	8	3
07	Belgium	Fud Leclerc	"Ma petite chatte"	French	5	8
08	Germany	Margot Hielscher	"Für zwei Groschen Musik"	German	7	5
09	Austria	Liane Augustin	"Die ganze Welt braucht Liebe"	German	5	8
10	Switzerland	Lys Assia	"Giorgio"	German, Italian	2	24

Scoreboard

The scoreboard, after Austria contributed its points

André Claveau during a rehearsal, singing Dors, mon amour

Each country had 10 jury members who each decided the best song and each awarded 1 point.

		Voting results
		Total score	Switzerland	Austria	Germany	Belgium	Denmark	Sweden	Luxembourg	France	Netherlands	Italy
Contestants	Italy	13	1	1	4	4		1		1	1
	Netherlands	1	1
	France	27	1	7	1	1	9	1	1			6
	Luxembourg	1	1
	Sweden	10	3	1		1			3		2
	Denmark	3						1		1	1
	Belgium	8	1		5		1	1
	Germany	5		1		1		1		2
	Austria	8	2			1		1	1	3
	Switzerland	24				2		4	5	3	6	4

Broadcasters, commentators and spokespersons

Spokespersons

Listed below is the order in which votes were cast during the 1958 contest along with the spokesperson who was responsible for announcing the votes for their respective country.[11]

1.   Switzerland – Mäni Weber
2.  Austria – TBC
3.  Germany – Claudia Doren
4.  Belgium – Paule Herreman
5.  Denmark – Svend Pedersen
6.  Sweden – Roland Eiworth
7.  Luxembourg – Pierre Bellemare
8.  France – Armand Lanoux
9.  Netherlands – Piet te Nuyl
10.  Italy – Fulvia Colombo

Broadcasters and commentators

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

Country	Broadcaster(s)	Commentator(s)	Ref(s)
Participating countries
Austria	ORF	Wolf Mittler	[11]
Belgium	INR	French: Arlette Vincent	[11]
	NIR	Dutch: Nic Bal	[11]
Denmark	Statsradiofonien TV	Svend Pedersen	[11][12]
France	RTF	Pierre Tchernia	[11]
Germany	Deutsches Fernsehen	Wolf Mittler	[11]
Italy	Programma Nazionale	Bianca Maria Piccinino	[11]
Luxembourg	Télé-Luxembourg	Pierre Tchernia	[11]
Netherlands	NTS	Siebe van der Zee	[11]
Sweden	Sveriges TV	Jan Gabrielsson	[11]
Switzerland	TV DRS	German: Theodor Haller	[11]
	TSR	French: Georges Hardy	[11][13]
Non-participating countries
United Kingdom[lower-alpha 1]	BBC Television Service	Peter Haigh	[11][9]

Notes and references

Notes

1. The BBC had scheduled to broadcast the Contest on the 12 March 1958, however due to live coverage of a sports event on the same day meant that the broadcast had to be delayed until 16 March.

References

1. O'Connor, John Kennedy. The Eurovision Song Contest - The Official Celebration. Carlton Books, 2015. ISBN 978-1-78097-638-9. Pages 32-33
2. "Eurovision History – Hilversum 1958". European Broadcasting Union. Retrieved 5 March 2012.
3. "From Hilvertshem to Hilversum" (in Dutch). Hilversum Mediastad. Archived from the original on 26 July 2012. Retrieved 23 October 2012.
4. "Shining a light on the United Kingdom: 60 Years at Eurovision". European Broadcasting Union. Retrieved 12 January 2017.
5. Dornbrook, Don (24 May 1959). "And Now the Grammy Awards". The Milwaukee Journal. Retrieved 1 May 2011.
6. "GRAMMY Rewind: 1st Annual GRAMMY Awards". www.grammy.com. Retrieved 22 January 2012.
7. "International Pull of Grammys Veries In Key Markets - Grammy Facts". Billboard. 6 March 1999. p. 101. Retrieved 24 January 2012.
8. "And the conductor is..." Retrieved 10 July 2018.
9. Roxburgh, Gordon (2012). Songs for Europe: The United Kingdom at the Eurovision Song Contest. Volume One: The 1950s and 1960s. Prestatyn: Telos Publishing. pp. 160–165. ISBN 978-1-84583-065-6.
10. "Eurovision Song Contest 1958". The Diggiloo Thrush. Retrieved 4 March 2012.
11. "Eurovision 1958 Cast and Crew Details". IMDb. Retrieved 17 July 2020.
12. https://www.danskkulturarv.dk/programoversigt/?pdf=A-1958-03-12-P-0170
13. "Programme TV du 9 au 15 mars". Radio TV - Je vois tout. Lausanne, Switzerland: Le Radio SA. 6 March 1958.

External links

• Official website