Lindeman is the surname of a large family of fictional characters portrayed by Swedish
comedian
A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience by making them laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing
Amusement is the state of experiencing humorous and entertaining events or situations while the person or a ...
Hans Alfredson
Hans Folke "Hasse" Alfredson (28 June 1931 – 10 September 2017) was a Swedish actor, film director, writer, and comedian. He was born in Malmö, Sweden. He is known for his collaboration with Tage Danielsson as the duo Hasse & Tage and their p ...
in improvised monologues.
Alfredson performed as Lindeman in the revues ''
Gröna hund'' (1962), ''
Gula hund'' (1964), ''
Lådan'' (1966-1967) and ''
Under dubbelgöken'' (1979). Every evening when the revues were played, an interviewer played by
Lasse O'Månsson or
Tage Danielsson
Tage Danielsson (; 5 February 1928 – 13 October 1985) was a Swedish author, actor, comedian, poet and film director. He is best known for his collaboration with Hans Alfredson in the comedy duo Hasse & Tage.
Career
After graduation from ...
would mention a topic from that day's newspaper and introduce a character called Lindeman. Alfredson would then improvise over the given topic.
Alfredson got the idea for the Lindeman sketches when he visited New York City together with
Povel Ramel
Baron Povel Karl Henric Ramel (; 1 June 1922 – 5 June 2007) was a Swedish entertainer. Ramel was a singer, pianist, vaudeville artist, author and a novelty song composer. His style was characterized by imaginative wit, both verbal and musical. ...
, and went to a so-called "instant theater" in
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...
. The audience were allowed to request sketches on different topics, but Alfredson was unimpressed by the fact that when he and Ramel returned on the next evening, the actors performed the same "improvised" sketches. The different incarnations of Lindeman were thus all different, and had different occupations which in some way related to the topic of the day.
In the first series of Lindeman sketches in ''Gröna hund'' in 1962, all the characters had the first name Valfrid and were interviewed by O'Månsson. The recurring punchline for this first series was that they always ended up with that evening's Lindeman having his waistcoat stuck in his trouser zipper. In ''Gula hund'', the Lindemen were introduced as Valfrid's son, Malte. The waistcoat-and-trousers running gag was abandoned, and it was Danielsson who acted as the interviewer from this point onwards. In ''Lådan'' and ''Under dubbelgöken'', the Lindemen had different first names, and were occasionally female.
Alfredson and Danielsson also released a number of LP records with Lindeman sketches. In an interview in 1982, when the duo had sold 350,000 copies of their records, Alfredson declared that he would not perform the character again, saying "Lindeman is dead, and the final record was posthumous."
References
Swedish humour
{{Comedy-stub