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Cookie Fonster Re-Reviews Eurovision 1956: Let’s Begin Round Two!

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Introduction

OK, so… I just got fired from my job shortly before my one-year anniversary. And while I apply for new ones, I need to find something to do during the cracks in the day. Since I’m done with all the 2025 national final reviews I wanted to write, I’ll do what my heart wants and restart my Eurovision blog post series! And do other projects when I need a break from this, like my large number site. The main change in round 2 of my Eurovision blog is: this time I will rank all the songs per year. I wasn’t up for the task of ranking all the songs in round 1, because I was getting to know most of these songs for the first time, but now I’m ready to rank.

In case you aren’t aware of how Eurovision came to be: shortly after they were founded in 1950, the European Broadcasting Union wanted to make a collaborative telvision program between multiple countries. All the European countries speak different languages, but the one language they all can understand is music. The EBU took inspiration from Italy’s annual Sanremo Music Festival, which began in 1951 and was first broadcast on television in 1955, and adapted its format into a competition between multiple countries. Italy sent the winner and runner-up of the Sanremo Festival to Eurovision this year.

Now to recap the basic facts about this contest: seven countries participated—the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, France, Luxembourg, and Italy—and each of them sent not one, but two songs. Some countries sent the same artist singing two songs, others sent two different singers. Switzerland was given the duty of hosting in their Italian-speaking city Lugano, and most people believe that was because they’re closest to the center of the competing nations. In the early years, the show was hosted in the host city’s language, so the contest was presented entirely in Italian by the TV host Lohengrin Filipello. Luckily, his diction in Italian is very clear and easy to understand for those familiar with at least one Romance language, as is the case for me with French.

Switzerland sent Lys Assia to sing two songs, one in German and one in French, and her francophone song “Refrain” won the contest. Some people suspect that the only reason Switzerland won was because back then there was no rule against voting for your own country, and Switzerland had the extra boost of Luxembourg hiring Swiss citizens as their jurors. But this is nothing more than a theory, because the voting results of 1956 are lost to the sands of time. Plus, the huge applause at the end of “Refrain” is evidence against this theory. Also lost to time is the video footage of that year (except for Lys Assia’s winner reprise), and apparently even one of the interval acts. Luckily, we have audio footage of all 14 competing songs, which I’ll start reviewing right now!

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Cookie Fonster Reviews Eurovision 1956: Humble Beginnings Shrouded in Mystery

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< Intro Post | 1956 Review | 1957 Review >

Note: I wrote this post after finishing my review of the season 6 finale of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. That will come out Friday morning!

Introduction

The first ever Eurovision Song Contest, then known as the Grand Prix of the Eurovision Song Competition (French: Grand Prix Eurovision de la Chanson Européenne), was held exactly 67 years before the day I am writing these words—on May 24, 1956. It boggles my mind how long Eurovision has existed. The contest is 44 years older than me, and it was first held when my grandparents were teenagers. Two grandparents who lived in Germany and might have known of the contest; two grandparents who lived in the United States and probably had no way to know it existed.

There are innumerable ways the Eurovision of then differed from the Eurovision of today. Imagine if you could tell a European in 1956 that people all over the world can watch the contest using telephones, or that the contest has so many countries that it now spans five days, or that Australia is now a competitor. But what I find most striking is how much of the first contest is lost to the sands of time. We don’t know any rankings besides the winner, we don’t know who most of the commentators are, we don’t know if some contestants are still alive*… but most importantly, we don’t even have video footage of the contest, except the winning song’s reprise. I wonder if anyone in 1956 was a huge enough Eurovision nerd to keep track of all information on the contest they could, then preserved the papers they wrote it on when the Internet age began? If anyone like that is alive today, their claims would be hard to prove.

Putting aside the incredible evolution of technology, here are some basic facts about Eurovision 1956. It was broadcast on radio and TV, though most people consumed it via radio. It was hosted near the center of the seven participating countries in Lugano, Switzerland, and in an excellent example of early installment weirdness, each country sent two songs. It’s one of two Eurovision Song Contests with no songs in English; half the songs were in French, and the others were in German, Dutch, and Italian.

Now what are we waiting for? Eurovision 1956 review, let’s begin! I’ll list the songs in order of broadcast.

* French Wikipedia claims Mony Marc is dead, while Spanish Wikipedia claims she’s alive. Perhaps because little is known about her, she has no English Wikipedia article.

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