Een beetje: A Light Dutch Flirtation Closes the Fifties

MAY 15 1959 · 12:10

Teddy Scholten · "Een beetje" · Netherlands · 1959 Placement: 1st · Language: Dutch · Composers: Dick Schallies, Willy van Hemert · Venue: Palais des Festivals et des Congrès · Host: Cannes, France · Type: winner · Broadcast: pre color On March 11, 1959, at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes — the same building that hosted the film festival — Teddy Scholten, a 33-year-old Dutch variety-show singer, performed 'Een beetje,' a breezy, coquettish number in which the lyric concedes, in Dutch, that yes, she has lied 'a little' to her lover. The arrangement was light, almost cabaret-style, the kind of song that would fit just as comfortably between comedy sketches on Dutch television as on a Eurovision stage. Scholten was not a pop star in the contemporary sense; she and her husband Henk Scholten were a well-loved Dutch radio and TV duo, and her Eurovision appearance was an extension of that theatrical-cabaret persona. The Cannes contest was the fourth edition of Eurovision and the first held in France; the jury system still distributed ten points per country. Scholten won with 21 points, narrowly edging the UK's Pearl Carr and Teddy Johnson. The victory gave the Netherlands its second Eurovision title in three years and closed out the contest's first phase — a run in which Dutch, Swiss, and French entries effectively set the winning template. Context Eurovision in 1959 was still pre-color, still orchestral, still a purely continental affair. The contest was taking on recognizable shape: televoting was decades away, national juries dominated, and the repertoire consisted almost entirely of chansons, fox-trots, and ballads performed in the national language. The UK had begun to take the contest seriously as a showcase; Italy, Germany, and France were its other powerhouses. Cannes in 1959 was a glamour location chosen deliberately to elevate the contest's prestige. The Netherlands, under the NTS broadcaster, was a consistent small-nation overachiever — winning twice in three years established a reputation the country would spend much of the following decades trying to live up to. Legacy Scholten never returned to Eurovision and largely retired from high-profile performance soon after, raising her family and working in Dutch television variety. 'Een beetje' remained a staple of Dutch memory and nostalgia compilations but, unlike some 1950s Eurovision winners, did not have a significant international afterlife. The Netherlands would win again in 1969 (tied, with Lenny Kuhr) and 1975 (Teach-In), closing out what is still considered the country's peak Eurovision run before Duncan Laurence in 2019. The 1959 victory is often grouped with 1957 as the 'Dutch founding moment' of the contest. Mythology The song is sometimes remembered as a duet because Scholten's career was closely linked with her husband's, but 'Een beetje' is a solo performance. The score of 21 points is occasionally reported as a landslide, but the margin over the UK runner-up was reportedly only five points. The title is often mistranscribed as ''n Beetje' — the apostrophe form — because that is how the song was credited on the original sheet music.