Lys Assia
Elegant and charming winner of the first Eurovision Song Contest
LYS ASSIA, who has died aged 94, won the first Eurovision Song Contest in 1956 with Refrain, an evergreen ballad about love and loss sung in French.
Only seven countries took part in that first event, which was held in Lugano, Switzerland. Although primarily a radio show, there were cameras present for those few Europeans who had television sets. Each country entered two songs and, in the case of Switzerland, Lys Assia also sang Das alte Karussell (The Old Carousel) in German. The United Kingdom did not take part until the following year.
In the film of her winning reprise, the only part of the event to survive, Lys Assia can be seen with a group of five backing singers, while a young boy in short trousers holding flowers stands beside her looking bored.
Lys Assia went on to represent Switzerland at the next two contests, sharing next-to-last place with Belgium in 1957 (“Never mind,” she said dismissively when asked about it) and coming a respectable second in 1958 with Giorgio in her third language, Italian.
In recent years she became the “grande dame” of Eurovision, turning up to the finals and entering into the spirit of the occasion. In 2003 she addressed millions of viewers by satellite link during the final in Riga. Asked about her memories of 1956, she replied: “It was fun – I won!”
She was born Rosa Mina Schärer on March 3 1924 at Rupperswil, a town in northern Switzerland, the youngest of 12 siblings. She took classical ballet lessons as a child and chose her stage name at a young age. “At fourteen and a half, I already earned my own money,” she said.
By the age of 16 she was dancing at the Corso Theatre in Zurich and during the Second World War she visited France to entertain French and American troops, where she switched to singing. Her first recording contract was with His Master’s Voice in 1942.
In Paris after the war she stepped in for an indisposed Josephine Baker and by 1950 songs such as Weisse Hochzeitskutsche (White Wedding Carriage, 1946) and O mein Papa (1950), which she famously sang live on the radio for her dying father, were hits in German-speaking countries and beyond. She made her first tour of the US in 1950.
After her Eurovision appearances Lys Assia led a private life until the death of her second husband, when she once again became involved in the Song Contest, starting the voting in Belgrade in 2008 and taking part in a 60thanniversary celebration in Stockholm in 2016.
Lys Assia, who was always elegant, confident and charming, attempted a Eurovision comeback for the 2012 contest, to be held in Baku, Azerbaijan, but came eighth out of 14 in the Swiss selection process. The jury said that her ballad, C’était ma vie (It Was My Life), lacked “modern elements”. Undeterred, she entered again the following year, this time singing in English and in the unlikely company of a rap group known as New Jack, but was again rejected.
Despite the kitsch nature of the Eurovision Song Contest, she remained absolute in her belief that it was an important way to build bridges between different countries and cultures after the horrors of the Second World War. “It makes people meet [other] people,” she declared.
In January 1957 Lys Assia married Johann Kunz, an industrialist who died from a serious illness nine months later. Six years later she married secondly Oscar Pedersen, a millionaire Danish diplomat with whom she ran a collection of 17 hotels in Europe, Japan and South America. He died in a car accident in 1995 that left her in a wheelchair for several months. She had a daughter from her first marriage.
Lys Assia, born March 3 1924, died March 24 2018