The 1962 Eurovision Song Contest, the seventh, was held on 18 March 1962– the last time the final was held on a Sunday. A total of 16 countries participated, the same amount as the previous year, with no new debuting countries or withdrawing countries. This was the first contest hosted by Luxembourg, who won the 1961 edition. RTL hosted the contest in the capital city at Villa Louvigny, the former headquarters of the broadcaster until 1991. The venue would also go on to host the 1966 edition.
The contest was presented by French-born Mireille Delannoy and of course featured an orchestra. Since these were the days before postcards and not much set-up was required between entries, the camera showed each national conductor passing on the baton to the next.
The stage was simple, resembling a grand corridor, with patterned tile, flowers, and a sparkly window. The singers and conductors would walk down this corridor and arrive at the front of the stage when it was their respective turn to perform.
Songs were performed in each country’s national language, with five songs being performed in French. Ballads were the song of choice as a large majority of entries were slow or dramatic ballads, in fact, the Top 4 songs were ballads. Of the 16 performers, there were eight female soloists, seven male soloists, and one male duet. All of the men were dressed in black tuxedos, most with black bow ties, few without. The ladies adorned at least three white dresses (it wasn’t broadcasted in colour), a common feature was sleeveless short dresses with short hair.
The Interval Act was French clown Achille Zavatta. His act included falling over while walking out onto the stage, attempting to place himself on the scoreboard under the country “Zavatta Land,” comically dancing with a clarinet, licking a clarinet and accidentally swallowing its mouth piece, stealing a trumpet from the orchestra, and then being carried away off the stage. a
Mishaps included a minor power outage, at times all you could see from the duo from the Netherlands was headless white shirts and black bow ties.
The scoreboard was simple, a black board with a handy white arrow pointing at the leading country. The 1962 contest did feature one debut, the debut of nul points, as Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Spain, receiving no votes from the juries.
France had its third victory with the song “Un premier amour” performed by Isabelle Aubret. Aubret competed in France’s national selection in 1961, 1970, and 1976. She also returned to the contest to represent France in 1983 where she finished in 8th place.