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Heidi

Heidi is a story focusing on events in the life of the title character, a young orphan girl. It was written as a children's book in 1880 by Johanna Spyri. Two sequels, Heidi Grows Up and Heidi's Children, were not written by Spyri but were written by her English translator, Charles Tritten . All three books are now in the public domain. About 20 film or television productions of the original story have been made, including an anime series (Japanese: アルプスの少女ハイジ). By far the most famous adaptation was the one starring Shirley Temple as Heidi, made in 1937 by 20th Century Fox.

In the story, Heidi is orphaned, and is taken by her Aunt Dete to live with her grumpy hermit of a grandfather in the mountains. He refuses to send Heidi to school, so she spends her time in the pastures with a goat herder boy named Geissenpeter. However the bond of love that begins to grow between Heidi and her grandfather is disrupted when Aunt Dete arrives to take Heidi to live in Frankfurt. There she is to become the companion to a partially paralyzed girl named Klara.

As Heidi grows homesick, the family doctor counsels that she be returned to the Alps, and thus she is sent back to live with her Grandfather. The next summer she is visited by Klara in a wheelchair, but in a fit of envy Geissenpeter pushes Klara's wheelchair down the slope. Left with no choice when she develops an overwhelming desire to see the flowers, Klara forces herself to walk and realises that she is no longer an invalid.

Thus the beautiful Alps are held by the story to cleanse and heal the mind, body, and spirit.

The "Heidi Game"

On November 17, 1968, NBC cut off a broadcast of the last hour of a live American Football League game between the New York Jets and the Oakland Raiders in favor of a pre-scheduled airing of a new made-for-TV version of Heidi. The game, which has come to be known as "the Heidi Game", featured a barrage of competitive scoring and was later voted one of the most memorable in football history. The preemption prompted the league, and other major sports leagues, to renegotiate future television broadcast contracts to avoid such preemptions.

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Last updated: 05-15-2005 13:41:22