Sixteen countries participated in the contest. Portugal made its debut this year, whereas Sweden decided not to enter.
The winner of the contest was Italy with the song "Non ho l'età", performed by Gigliola Cinquetti, written by Nicola Salerno and composed by Mario Panzeri. At the age of 16 years and 92 days, Gigliola Cinquetti became the youngest winner of the contest yet; a record she held until 1986.[1] The entry had one of the widest margins of victory ever witnessed in the competition. It garnered almost three times as many points as the second-placed song.
Besides the 1956 contest, the 1964 contest is the only other one of which there are no surviving video recordings.
Location
Tivolis Koncertsal, Copenhagen - host venue of the 1964 contest.
Sweden did not participate this year due to a strike among members of the Swedish Union for Performing Arts and Film (Swedish: Teaterförbundet). Swedish broadcaster Sveriges Radio however did ultimately broadcast the event.[4]Portugal competed in the contest for the first time, however they became the first country to score nul points on their début entry. Germany, Switzerland, and Yugoslavia also scored nul points for the first time. The Netherlands became the first country to send a singer of non-European ancestry, Anneke Grönloh who was of Indonesian descent.[5] Spain decided to send the Italian-Uruguayan group Los TNT who were the first group of three or more participants in the history of the contest.
Poul Leth Sørensen served as producer, Bent Fabricius Bjerre and Marianne Drewes acted as co-producers.[9]
Each country had 10 jury members who distributed three points among their one, two, or three favourite songs. The points were totaled and the first, second, and third placed songs were awarded 5, 3, and 1 votes in order. If only one song got every point within the jury it would get all 9 points. If only two songs were chosen, the songs would get 6 and 3 points in order.[5]
The prize to be awarded to the winning artist took the form of an engraved medallion made of silver.[10]
The event was covered by around 100 journalists and photographers.[11] The artists were accompanied by a 41-piece orchestra.[11] Rehearsals started on 19 March 1964.[11]
Contest overview
The contest was held on 21 March 1964, beginning at 22:00 CET (21:00 UTC).[12]
A political protest occurred after the Swiss entry: a man trespassed onto the stage holding a banner that read "Boycott Franco & Salazar". Whilst this was going on, television viewers were shown a shot of the scoreboard; once the man was removed by a television technician, the contest went on.[13][14]
The immediate response of the Koncertsal audience to the Italian entry was markedly enthusiastic and prolonged and, most unusually for a contest performance, after leaving the stage Gigliola Cinquetti was allowed to return to take a second bow. Her performance was given an unscheduled repeat on British television the following afternoon. In the event, she won the most crushing victory in the history of the contest, with a score almost three times that of her nearest rival, a feat extremely unlikely ever to be beaten under the post-1974 scoring system.
An aftershow party was held for the participating delegations at the restaurant Ambassadeur in Copenhagen.[16] Each of the 16 participating acts was awarded a silver trophy on this occasion.[16]
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.[20] No official accounts of the viewing figures are known to exist. Estimates given in the press ranged from 100 to 150 million viewers.[3][11][21]
Known details on the broadcasts in each country, including the specific broadcasting stations and commentators are shown in the tables below.
Broadcasters and commentators in participating countries
As with the 1956 contest, no complete video recording of the actual contest is known to have survived. Some clips of the contest have survived, including the winning announcement by Svend Pedersen, and part of Gigliola Cinquetti's reprise.[53] For some time, there was a rumour that a copy of the entire contest existed in the French television archives.[54] In 2021, INA confirmed to Wiwibloggs that the French television archives do not possess a video copy of the contest.[55] However, the audio of a French radio broadcast can be found in the archives of INA.[30]
A persistent myth, even repeated on the official Eurovision site, is that the tape was destroyed in a fire in the 1970s. In a 2019 interview, DR claimed that the broadcast was never recorded in the first place, allegedly due to no tape machines being available at the studio at the time.[56] The audio of most of the show, however, is still available online, without the last few minutes, and short video clips and photos from various archives also remain available.[57]
Notes
^On behalf of the German public broadcasting consortium ARD[8]
^ abcdBrincourt, André (23 March 1964). "La Télévision par Andŕe Brincourt: Le Grand Prix Eurovision de la chanson à Gigliola Cinquetti (Italie)" [Television by Andŕe Brancourt: The Eurovision Song Contest to Gigliola Cinquetti (Italy)]. Le Figaro (in French). Paris, France. p. 21. ISSN0182-5852.
^ abThorsson, Leif; Verhage, Martin (2006). Melodifestivalen genom tiderna : de svenska uttagningarna och internationella finalerna [Melodifestivalen through the ages: the Swedish selections and international final] (in Swedish). Stockholm: Premium Publishing. pp. 48–49. ISBN91-89136-29-2.
^Roxburgh, Gordon (2012). Songs for Europe: The United Kingdom at the Eurovision Song Contest. Volume One: The 1950s and 1960s. Prestatyn: Telos Publishing. pp. 348–358. ISBN978-1-84583-065-6.
^"Frankrig Grand Prix-favorit" [France Grand Prix favourite]. Politiken (in Danish). Copenhagen, Denmark. 20 March 1964. p. 7. OCLC224543818.
^Ahm, Leif (22 March 1964). "Små søde tralala" [Little cuties tralala]. Politiken (in Danish). Copenhagen, Denmark. p. 8. OCLC224543818.
^ abcd"16 landes top-pop-folk her" [16 countries' top pop people here]. Politiken (in Danish). Copenhagen, Denmark. 19 March 1964. p. 7. OCLC224543818.
^Pajala, Mari (2013). "Intervision song contests and Finnish television between East and West'". In Badenoch, Alexander; Fickers, Andreas; Henrich-Franke, Christian (eds.). Intervision Song Contests and Finnish Television between East and West. Baden-Baden, Germany: Nomos. pp. 215–270. doi:10.5771/9783845236070-215. ISBN9783845236070 – via Academia.edu. Walli was closely involved in YLE's ESC productions; among other things he [...] provided the commentary for all the 1960s ESCs on Finnish television.{{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)
^"Boletim do dia" [Bulletin of the day]. Diário de Lisboa (in Portuguese). Lisbon, Portugal. 21 March 1964. p. 15. Retrieved 27 December 2022 – via Casa Comum.
^"Programme TV" [TV schedule]. Radio TV – Je vois tout (in French). No. 11. Lausanne, Switzerland. 12 March 1964. pp. 28–30. Retrieved 27 December 2022 – via Scriptorium.
