Eurovision 1957: Frankfurt

The second contest is where Eurovision starts to look like itself. There is a scoreboard. Countries ring in with their votes. Somebody brings a prop. And a song breaks the rules so thoroughly that the rules have to be tightened afterwards.

Why Frankfurt

Switzerland had hosted the first contest and won it, and did not want to stage it twice running. So the EBU decided the job would pass between broadcasters. West Germany’s Hessischer Rundfunk put its hand up, and Frankfurt was agreed as early as June 1956.

The venue was the broadcaster’s own concert studio, the Großer Sendesaal, with an audience of about 400. Hosting cost the station somewhere between 40,000 and 50,000 Deutschmarks. The show went out on 3 March 1957 — still the earliest date in the year a contest has ever been held — and was over in an hour. The actress Anaid Iplicjian presented it.

The set had a staircase for the singers to walk down and a backdrop shaped like a lyre, with a panel in the middle that was swapped for each country. Behind the orchestra hung photographs of European landmarks, the Brandenburg Gate and the Colosseum among them.

Ten countries

The seven from Lugano all came back. Austria and Denmark, who had missed the deadline the year before, made it this time, and the United Kingdom entered for the first time. Monaco appeared on the list of participants and had vanished from it by late February.

Two singers were returning. Lys Assia, the reigning winner, sang for Switzerland again. Corry Brokken, who had sung one of the two Dutch songs in 1956, was back for the Netherlands.

The new rules

Nearly everything about the 1956 vote was replaced:

• One song per country, not two.
• Up to two people on stage, where before there could only be one.
• Ten jurors in each country, each with a single vote for their favourite song — and none of them allowed to vote for their own country.
• Voting in public. The juries stayed at home, watched on television, and were telephoned one by one by the presenter. The totals went up on a scoreboard as they came in.

The scoreboard was borrowed. The BBC had used one in its own Festival of British Popular Songs, with regional juries and a running total, and EBU organisers had watched a recording. Broadcasters were told to make sure their jurors’ television sets were switched off during the voting, so that nobody could see how other countries were leaning.

The rule nobody enforced

Songs were supposed to last no more than about three and a half minutes. Italy’s entry, sung by Nunzio Gallo, ran for five minutes and nine seconds. It remains the longest song ever performed at the contest. There were loud protests; it was not disqualified.

The United Kingdom went the other way. Patricia Bredin’s “All” was over in one minute and fifty-three seconds, and stayed the shortest entry in the contest’s history for the next fifty-eight years.

From 1958 the time limit was actually policed.

Firsts

Denmark sent Birthe Wilke and Gustav Winckler, the first duo to compete, who finished their song with a passionate kiss on camera. They came third.

Germany’s Margot Hielscher sang “Telefon, Telefon” into an actual telephone — the first prop the contest had seen.

And for the first time there was a prize to hand over. The winning composer received a medallion, designed by the sculptor Hans Mettel, with the Eurovision emblem on one side and Europa riding the bull on the other.

The result

The Netherlands won easily. Of the 100 votes available, 31 went to Corry Brokken’s “Net als toen”. France was second with 17, Denmark third with 10. Austria, on its debut, was last with three.

Brokken had sung in Lugano the year before and, like everyone but the winner, never learned where she finished. This time the numbers were up on the wall.