50 Fun Facts About Heidi

In the original novel Heidi, what is the young heroine's hair like?

Short, black and curly hair, with black eyes to match, is how a street boy describes her in the book. A sequel by another hand later gave her long, straight, fair hair.

Which US network cut away from a thrilling football finish in 1968 to start its film Heidi on time?

NBC switched to the film at seven o'clock sharp, and viewers in the East missed two touchdowns in the final minute. The network's president later made a formal apology.

Which child star, Hollywood's top box-office draw at the time, played the title role in 1937's Heidi?

Shirley Temple was in her third straight year as cinema's biggest attraction. She struggled to milk the goat on set, so the director rigged a hidden tube to fake it.

In the novel Heidi, what does a jealous Peter send crashing down the mountainside, only to confess later?

A wheelchair belonging to Clara was smashed to pieces, and the loss did her good: with nothing to sit in, she began trying to stand and slowly learned to take steps.

To which city is Heidi taken against her will to be a companion to Clara, a wealthy girl who cannot walk?

Frankfurt stifles her: told that a church tower gives a view for miles, she climbs one hoping to see her mountains and finds only a sea of roofs and chimney-pots.

In Heidi, which night-time habit of the unhappy girl do the servants in Clara's house mistake for a ghost?

Sleepwalking left the front door standing open each morning, terrifying the staff. Clara's father kept watch one night and found a barefoot girl in a nightgown.

Which ailment, once nicknamed the Swiss illness by physicians, leaves Heidi thin and pale in the city?

Homesickness was first written up as a medical condition in 1688, after Swiss mercenaries were seen pining for their own landscapes. In the novel it wastes Heidi until she is sent back to the Alps.

Which author, later honoured on a Swiss postage stamp and a commemorative coin, wrote the children's classic Heidi?

Johanna Spyri wrote the novel in just four weeks. She went on publishing stories for children and adults until her death in 1901.

What does Heidi bring home from the keeper of a church tower, sending the stern housekeeper into a panic?

Kittens from the tower-keeper's cat delighted Clara, but the housekeeper fled into the study and locked the door until every one had been taken away.

Tourists from which country, where the novel was first translated in 1920, flock to Heidi's corner of the Alps?

Japan has loved the tale ever since, and the book largely shaped how the country pictures Switzerland. The region around the story's setting now markets itself under the heroine's name.

In the 2015 film Heidi, which relative tricks the girl into leaving her grandfather for a household in the city?

Her aunt Dete had raised the orphan for years before handing her to the old man. She comes back to take the girl away as companion to a rich family's daughter.

Which actor from the wartime drama Downfall plays the gruff grandfather in the 2015 film Heidi?

Bruno Ganz said he could not refuse a story he called a national epic in Switzerland. Born in Zürich, he held the Iffland-Ring, passed down from one great stage actor to the next.

Grandfather's brown goat in Heidi is named after a bear; which bird gives the white goat its name?

A swan lends its name to Little Swan, the white goat stabled beside brown Little Bear. Heidi asks what they are called on her very first evening, then wishes each one goodnight by name.

Heidi is a pet form of which given name, used in full only by the strict housekeeper in the novel?

Adelheid was also her late mother's name, and the housekeeper insists a nickname is no Christian name for a child. Some English editions print the name as Adelaide.

Where does Heidi choose to sleep on her first night in grandfather's hut, beneath a little round window?

In the hayloft she heaps up fresh, sweet-smelling hay for a mattress. Through the round window beside it she can look straight down the valley.

What does grandfather toast golden on a long iron fork for Heidi's first meal at the hut?

Cheese toasted until soft as butter is her first meal there, spread on a thick slice and washed down with milk. She drains the bowl without stopping and says she never drank any so good.

Heidi was written by a Zürich author in which of Switzerland's four national languages?

German was the language of all her books, and Heidi first went on sale from a publisher in the town of Gotha. An English edition followed as early as 1882.

Which future co-founder of Studio Ghibli directed the 1974 anime series Heidi, Girl of the Alps?

Isao Takahata travelled to the Alps to study the real setting first, taking along a young Hayao Miyazaki, who handled scene design and layout on the series.

What is the surname of the strict Fräulein who runs Clara's household in Heidi and is terrified of animals?

Rottenmeier is in charge because Clara's mother is dead and her father is usually away on business. In some English editions she is plain Miss Rottenmeier.

Which Bible story does Heidi read to her grandfather, moving the bitter old man to pray for the first time in years?

The Prodigal Son, about a wanderer welcomed home by his father, echoes the old man's own squandered youth. The next morning he walks down to church with Heidi.

What does Heidi hoard in her wardrobe in the city as a present for Peter's elderly grandmother?

Bread rolls of fine white flour were all the old woman could manage, since the hard dark loaves of the mountain were too tough to chew. Heidi pocketed the one beside her plate at every dinner and supper.

Which trade did Heidi's father Tobias follow before a falling beam killed him when she was a baby?

Carpenter Tobias had learned his trade in the town of Mels and died only two years after marrying. His widow never recovered from the shock, leaving Heidi an orphan.

What does Heidi read aloud to Peter's blind grandmother, who can no longer make out the words herself?

Hymns from the old woman's own book are what she most longs to hear again. Heidi had only just learned to read in the city, and the verses become her daily gift.

Which trees stand behind grandfather's hut in Heidi, roaring in the wind that the girl loves to hear?

Firs, three of them with long unlopped branches, stand behind the hut. On her first day Heidi stops beneath them just to listen to the rushing in their topmost branches.

Which real Swiss town, known for its wine as well as its link to Heidi, is the setting of the novel?

Maienfeld lies on a key route through the Rhine valley. A nearby hamlet, once called Oberrofels, was renamed after the heroine for visiting fans.

Heidi is set in which Swiss canton, the country's largest and the only one with three official languages?

Graubünden, also called Grisons, is where the author spent several childhood holidays, near its capital Chur. It is the only canton where Romansh has official status.

In the 2015 film Heidi, Clara's grandmother gives the girl a notebook to encourage which ambition?

To be a writer is her dream by the film's final scenes. In the novel the same grandmother's present is a picture book, promised for the day Heidi can read it.

What does grandfather finally let Heidi do in the 2015 film, buying a winter home in the village for the purpose?

Go to school is what she had longed to do while watching the village children. Wintering below the snowline, instead of up at the hut, makes the daily trip possible.

Which composer, years before his blockbuster film scores, wrote the music for the 1968 television film of Heidi?

John Williams scored the film years before Jaws and Star Wars made him a household name. The cast he wrote for included Michael Redgrave and Jean Simmons.

Jennifer Edwards, who played Heidi on American television in 1968, is the stepdaughter of which musical star?

Julie Andrews married Jennifer's father, the film-maker Blake Edwards. Jennifer later co-wrote a television film with him, but Heidi remained her best-known role.

Which Hollywood star played Peter opposite a teenage Heidi in the 1990 sequel film Courage Mountain?

Charlie Sheen plays the goatherd as a young soldier, in a story that moves Heidi forward to the First World War. TV Guide gave the film one star and criticised his casting.

Which Swedish-born actor played the grandfather opposite Emma Bolger in the 2005 British film of Heidi?

Max von Sydow starred alongside Diana Rigg as Clara's grandmother. The mountain scenes were shot in the Julian Alps of Slovenia, with Welsh towns standing in for the village.

Which American cartoon studio, usually tied to its own television characters, made the 1982 musical Heidi's Song?

Hanna-Barbera cast Lorne Greene as the grandfather and gave Sammy Davis Jr a singing role. Joseph Barbera blamed poor distribution when it flopped in a crowded week for animated features.

The sequels Heidi Grows Up and Heidi's Children were written decades later not by the original author but by whom?

Her translator Charles Tritten, who put the books into French, wrote them in the 1930s, long after her death. In them Heidi grows up, marries Peter and has children of her own.

Which composer, living in Zürich as a political refugee, became friendly with the author of Heidi and her husband?

Richard Wagner was introduced to her by her husband Bernhard, a lawyer she married in 1852. Her own first story did not appear in print until she was in her forties.

Which hamlet below grandfather's hut in Heidi has a name that simply means small village in Swiss dialect?

Dörfli is where the mountain folk go to church and where Heidi and her grandfather take a house for the winter. The 1968 television film shot it in the Engadine villages of Guarda and Ardez.

Heidi's grandfather is called the Alm-Uncle because he lives up on the Alm; what does that word mean?

A summer pasture high on a mountainside is an Alm, where herds graze until the cold drives them back to the valley. The word shares its root with the name of the Alps themselves.

In Heidi, who realises the girl is wasting away and orders Clara's father to send her home the next day?

The family doctor, grieving for a daughter of his own, later visits the mountain himself. He ends up settling in the village below, sharing a rebuilt house with Heidi and her grandfather.

What is the surname of Clara's wealthy family, whose grand city house Heidi is sent to live in?

Sesemann is the name Heidi gives a helpful stranger, adding that the big house has a gold dog's head on the door. Clara's father, a businessman, is away travelling for much of the story.

In the 1937 Hollywood film of Heidi, Clara shows her visiting father she can walk again on which occasion?

Christmas at the family's city house replaces the novel's mountain setting for her recovery. The film then invents a pursuit, after the dismissed housekeeper tries to sell Heidi.

Village gossip in Heidi says the grandfather once had to flee which Italian city where he served as a soldier?

Naples is where he vanished to after drinking and gambling away one of the largest farms in his home valley. Rumour said he had killed a man there in a brawl, which is why the villagers shun him.

What does grandfather build on Heidi's first day at the hut so that she can reach the table?

A tall stool with three legs, like his own only higher, takes shape as if by magic while she watches. At their first meal she had used his chair as a table.

What kind of object is 2521 Heidi, named in honour of the children's novel and its mountain heroine?

An asteroid carries the name, logged in 1979 under the provisional label 1979 DK. The number marks its place in the catalogue of minor planets.

Which young newcomer from Chur, picked from about 500 children, plays the title role in the 2015 film Heidi?

Anuk Steffen had never stood in front of a camera before the shoot. The film's Peter, Quirin Agrippi, was also a first-timer, cast from the same search of local children.

Which director made the 2015 film Heidi, working from a screenplay by Petra Volpe?

Alain Gsponer shot the village scenes in Latsch, the same Alpine hamlet used by the 1952 Heidi film. His crew hid every modern detail to recreate the look of about 1860.

Which kindly manservant of Clara's family escorts Heidi on the long journey home to her grandfather?

Sebastian is told to take her as far as Basle on the first day and the rest of the way on the second. He also carries a letter from Clara's father explaining everything to the grandfather.

Which pet, belonging to a street musician Heidi befriends, crawls across the floor and terrifies the housekeeper?

A tortoise comes in with the ragged boy who had guided Heidi to the church tower. When he plays for Clara it crawls towards the housekeeper, who jumps higher than she has in years.

What carried off Heidi's mother soon after her husband's death, leaving the baby an orphan?

A fever set in when she saw her husband's body, and she died two months after him. Villagers called the double loss a punishment on the grandfather for his godless life.

Which hairstyle did the designer of the 1974 anime Heidi, Girl of the Alps drop on a Swiss librarian's advice?

Pigtails went because the librarian pointed out that a five-year-old living up a mountain could never tie them herself. The grandfather's look was copied from a carved figure in a souvenir shop.

Which American actor played the grandfather opposite Jane Seymour in the 1993 Disney Channel miniseries of Heidi?

Jason Robards played a grandfather the script named Tobias, the name the novel gives to Heidi's father. The two-part production was filmed in the Austrian Alps around Salzburg and Tirol.