3 months ago

Date: 21 March 1970 - Host Venue: RAI Theatre, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Presenter: Willy Dobbe - Musical director: Dolf van der Linden
Directed by Theo Ordeman - Executive supervisor: Clifford Brown
Executive producer: Warner van Kampen
Host broadcaster: Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (NOS)
Interval act: The Don Lurio Dancers

The Eurovision Song Contest 1970 was the 15th edition of the annual Eurovision Song Contest. It took place in Amsterdam, Netherlands and was held at the RAI Congrescentrum on Saturday 21 March 1970. The show was hosted by Willy Dobbe.

Due to there being four winners in the previous contest, a question was raised as to which nation would host the 1970 contest. With the UK having hosted in 1968 and Spain in 1969, only France and Netherlands were in consideration. A toss of a coin resulted in the host country being decided as the Netherlands.

Twelve countries participated in the contest. It was the lowest number of participants since the 1959 edition. Finland, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and Austria did not participate in 1970 in protest of the four-way tie result of 1969.

The winner was Ireland with the song "All Kinds of Everything", performed by Dana, and written/composed by Derry Lindsay and Jackie Smith. This was Ireland's first victory in the contest. The United Kingdom finished in second place for the seventh time, while Germany ended up in third place - the best result for the country at the time. This was also the only time that Luxembourg received 'nul points'.

The Dutch producers were forced to pad out the show as only 12 nations decided to make the trip to Amsterdam. The result was a format which has endured almost to the present day. An extended opening sequence (filmed in Amsterdam) set the scene, while every entry was introduced by a short video 'postcard' featuring each of the participating artists, ostensibly in their own nation. However, the 'postcards' for Switzerland, Luxembourg and Monaco were all filmed on location in Paris (as was the French postcard). The long introduction film (over four minutes long) was followed by what probably is one of the shortest ever introductions by any presenter. Willy Dobbe only welcomed the viewers in English, French and Dutch, finishing her introduction after only 24 seconds. On screen captions introduced each entry, with the song titles listed all in lower case and the names of the artist and composers/authors all in capitals.

The set design was devised by Roland de Groot; a simple design was composed of a number of curved horizontal bars and silver baubles which could be moved in a variety of different ways.

To avoid an incident like in 1969, a tie rule was created. It stated that, if two or more songs gained the same number of votes and were tied for first place, each song would have to be performed again. After which each national jury (other than the juries of the countries concerned) would have a show of hands of which they thought was the best. If the countries tied again, then they would share first place.

In the run-up to the Contest, the United Kingdom were favourites to win and also the favourite with the 50-piece orchestra. So sure of victory, the UK delegation had organised a winner's party to be thrown after the contest In the end, the only two countries in the running were the UK and Ireland, albeit the latter holding the lead throughout the voting. Ireland took the victory with 32 points, 6 points ahead of the UK, with Germany a distant third. Luxembourg failed to score any points at all - their only time ever to do so.
Ireland won the contest with "All Kinds of Everything", penned by Derry Lindsay and Jackie Smith, and sung by another unknown, Dana, an 18-year-old schoolgirl from Derry, Northern Ireland. Scottish songwriter Bill Martin, who was responsible for the winning song's publishing, has on numerous subsequent occasions claimed that he and his song writing partner Phil Coulter (the team behind both Puppet on a String and Congratulations) actually wrote the song themselves, but were prevented from using their names on the credit.

Results:

Draw Country Artist Song Language Place Points
01 Netherlands Hearts of Soul "Waterman" Dutch 7 7
02 Switzerland Henri Dès "Retour" French 4 8
03 Italy Gianni Morandi "Occhi di ragazza" Italian 8 5
04 Yugoslavia Eva Sršen "Pridi, dala ti bom cvet" Slovene 11 4
05 Belgium Jean Vallée "Viens l'oublier" French 8 5
06 France Guy Bonnet "Marie-Blanche" French 4 8
07 United Kingdom Mary Hopkin "Knock, Knock Who's There?" English 2 26
08 Luxembourg David Alexandre Winter "Je suis tombé du ciel" French 12 0
09 Spain Julio Iglesias "Gwendolyne" Spanish 4 8
10 Monaco Dominique Dussault "Marlène" French 8 5
11 Germany Katja Ebstein "Wunder gibt es immer wieder" German 3 12
12 Ireland Dana "All Kinds of Everything" English 1 32