Dr. Dante: From 60s Hypnotist To Modern Criminal
I have quite the story for you all today, involving stage hypnosis, crime, and one very interesting man.
For a little context, I’ve been reading a book on the history of Knotts Berry Farm, the berry stand that slowly morphed into a theme park that today is the 15th most visited in the world.
In this book, there is mention of a performance space that held many different shows over the years. One of these was a hypnotist, going by the name of Dante.
Now the second I heard that name I had to look into the guy, I was hoping I could find a poster of his to add to an upcoming hypnosis posters write up, just because Dante is a great name.
But the story of Dante is one that fully deserves its own post as it is quite the twisted little tale.
But where to start, well normally with such things I would do the basic historian thing of giving you a person’s name and their date of birth. But with Dante, we actually don’t know.
So, Dante’s real name is Ronald Pellar, however, for most of his career, he said his name was Ronald Dante. But he has used over 40 aliases over the years, for reasons that might become apparent later...
Dante also gave differing people totally different accounts of his life, in a 2006 interview with The San Diego Union-Tribune he said he was born in 1920, however, in a Chicago Tribune article from 1985 he is said to be 57 meaning he would have been born in 1927 or 1928.
He told the interviewer in 2006 that he had grown up in Kuala Lumpur, where an attack left him and his brother orphans. They were then sent to an orphanage in Chicago, only for young Dante to leave at age 11 to become a street kid, making money by selling counterfeit goods.
However, his ex-wife, Lana Turner (who we will get onto later) said that Dante had told her that he grew up in Singapour and had a doctorate in psychology from a university in that country. However, reporters who investigated the claim found this to be totally and utterly bogus.
Every part of Dante’s past is honestly debatable with so many alternative histories floating around, from both his own mouth and the mouths of others linked to him.
The story of the Dante starts in the 1960s, where, using the full name Ronald Dante, he was making waves as a hypnotist in nightclubs and bars. His deep voice and piercing eyes made him quite the imposing figure on stage, something that translated into many good reviews for his act.
I was actually lucky to find a full scan of Dante’s press kit from the time, a collection of articles and other things he would send to those who were curious about booking him (however even this isn’t safe from accusations of fakery as I’ll mention later).
Now, this might look weird, but this is how press cuttings were sent in this era, with the banner at the top. This was to show that you had been mentioned in a major publication.
This specific issue is from October 16th, 1962, showing that Dante is playing to decently sized clubs and is apparently getting good reviews, even if those reviews are rather generic for the era.
Something that interests me is the genie’s lamp motif used for his logo. Because it doesn’t really work with the name “Dante” then again, nor does the very “oriental” font they decided to use. Though you could likely see this as an attempt to mix the Arabic and Asian trends that were decently popular in the US during the period.
Also of note is that Dante often used the nickname/tagline “Mr. Hypnotism” during his career. Interestingly you often see him using Mr. Hypnotism as more of a stage name, with it getting top billing over the Dante name.
A big part of the press pack is letters of recommendation from various companies and venus commending Dante on a great show and for selling the venue out.
This is a good example of this, apparently, in 1965 Dante was breaking records at a supper club.
There are also other letters from the period from organizations that hold a lot more clout to the modern observer.
In 1967 and 1968 Dante did shows in front of the US Airforce and US Army, one in Vietnam and one in Bangcock.
These glowing reviews would be great for a performer, as a recommendation from two large government agencies would pretty much guarantee you work in the future.
Of note, I actually have a scan from a review of one of Dante’s Hong Kong shows, very likely from the same series of shows that the airmen attended.
It is quite an interesting review, making a point that locals don’t think that speaking acts ever sell, due to the audience only being fluent in Chinese (and that Chinese acts apparently don’t speak?).
But of interest is the fact that the reviewer volunteered to be one of Dante’s subjects and actually gives a write up of the action from the subject’s perspective.
To summarize:
-The subjects are told to stand with their hands relaxed, heels together.
-The subjects then stand and look up at the ceiling, taking a deep breath
-The subjects close their eyes, start to breathe normally and then count.
-Dante then says when he touches them on the shoulder he wants them to visualize themselves as steel, and himself as a magnet, pulling them towards him.
-If they feel it, the subjects are to fall forward where Dante will catch them.
This does not work on the reporter who is sent back to his chair, he does mention that he considered falling anyway just to keep the show going and notes that during the suggestions, several other people ended up coming back to their chairs meaning they might have had the same idea he did.
Dante even comments to him later that a good subject has “an urge to show off”.
The acts performed during this show included:
-Their arms are made of steel and they are unable to drop them
-Watching a funny film
-Cheering on a racehorse
-Hiding the winnings from said racehorse
-Feeling themselves pricked with a pin so they jump
-Thinking they are naked
-Dancing
Then the subjects are sent back to the chairs, acting like the Road Runner.
Interestingly this set would pretty much work today, which really shows you how little stage hypnosis shows have changed since the mid-60s.
Amusingly the reviewer is actually surprised the Road Runner bit worked, due to the character being “popular 15 years ago” and suggests Dante should try making his subjects James Bond instead! (Which is honestly a good suggestion Goldfinger had been a smash hit in 1964 and Thunderball would make a decent amount at the box office when it came out in 1965 despite being considered the weakest Bond film today).
I would like to quote one of the final paragraphs verbatim:
I don’t pretend to know as much about hypnotism as this highly-rated American performer who has made a half-million people into his slaves on stage. But I was bothered when Dante failed to remove the suggestions he planted.
If hypnotism has the power to break bad habits as Dante suggests, and if his subjects were really hypnotized, then these eight people should jump as though stuck with a pin everytime someone resembling Dante stamps his feet.
This is honestly weirdly switched on for a review from the 60s, it honestly had me surprised.
Dante’s press pack does include a recommendation from the Cafe De Paris in Hong Kong
This poster is pretty interesting as it doesn’t really explain what the act is, minus the fact that two women will be present. In fact, the girls get a much more detailed billing than Dante himself.
Now, this could be the venue working on the idea that “speaking acts don’t sell” or it is proof that Dante already had quite a name for himself in Hong Kong. There is also the third option of bad cropping as the edge of the poster looks very badly cut, as if it was quickly done with scissors so there might have been more to it.
These were not the only international shows Dante did and his press pack contains a poster for a show in Mexico along with a newspaper cutting about it.
This poster has an interesting collage look to it, and once again Dante is advertised with this strange oriental font. For those curious, the text under Dante explains how his voice is insured by Lloyds of London for one million dollars. This is actually pretty common as Lloyds of London does allow performers to take out insurance on their talents. They have insured, amongst other things, Michael Flatley's legs, the hands of the1932 world yo-yo champion Harvey Lowe, the body of Ric Flair, Bruce Springsteen’s vocal chords and Tina Turner’s legs. So Dante having a policy totally makes sense.
Interestingly the cutting says that Dante has been in “five motion pictures” something I can’t find anything about, I’ve checked IMBD and every other film database I know of and can find a single one.
One other cutting from the pack really stands out to me, apparently, Dante played an 80,000 seat venue with the band Cream.
This is advertised as the first time a top rock group had performed with a hypnotist, but weirdly the article only mentions Dante and not Cream themselves.
Dante’s show seems mostly the same as in Hong Kong with a few minor additions of people being attacked by movie monsters, a trip through Disneyland (Disneyland being a weird recurring theme with Dante) and “sleeping in each other's arms”.
The ending of this article is really something, mentioning one “attractively packaged young lady,” being made to think she was a stripper and that she:
had discarded all but her undies before Dr. Dante tragically stopped her. Several sympathetic audience members, undoubtebly disliked by the remaining viewers, ran up to cover her
Now, I’m actually a big fan of Cream and yet I had never heard of this show. And I can’t seem to find any good record of it at all. Now Cream was not together long so we know this happened sometime between 1966 and 1968.
I would further presume it is post-1967 as I don’t think Cream was selling out big venues like this before Disraeli Gears came out. This is also due to them being described as “one of the world’s heaviest rock groups” which fits their post-Disraeli Gears sound.
Now there is a photo of Dante and Cream.
But there are a lot of photos of Dante with people as Dante loved getting his picture taken and often used the celebrities he was “friends” with as a marketing point.
My Eric Clapton based conundrums aside, however, the biggest moment for Dante’s career was in 1969 when Dante married the actress, Lana Turner.
Lana Turner had quite the life and most of it was in the public eye. The famous (and totally fake) legend says that the girl was spotted at the lunch counter of Schwab's Pharmacy in the 1930s. She was deemed so beautiful she was hired on the spot.
By the 1940s Lana was seen as a sex symbol and was a common pin-up for the troops fighting in Europe, and her role in the 1946 film “The Postman Always Rings Twice” cemented her as a powerful dramatic actress.
However, by the late 60s, she was on a downturn, her films were doing less well at the box office and MGM, her home studio, were having money issues due to having to divest from their theatres.
When she met Dante in an LA nightclub, they started a whirlwind romance that ended up in Lana’s 7th marriage.
Now, this is where some element of fakery appears. As part of the press kit, there is this cutting:
Compare this release to the one I showed above (and one I found myself from a newspaper archive). Note how the former focuses totally on Turner and this second one focuses mostly on Dante.
The source I got this from says it is fake and isn’t something the LA Times ever published and while I don’t have the resources to verify this myself, I actually believe them.
While Dante might have been a decently big name, he was not up to the level of Turner, who was a grand star even at this point. Also, this says Dante’s first wife was movie star Brigette Bardot which is totally not true.
Bardot's list of partners via marriage is:
Now, Bardot did say she had over a hundred lovers both men and women and Dante could have maybe been one of them. But they were never legally married, really throwing this cutting into question.
One other cutting from the pack is called into question by the compiler as well:
Basically, it is a review from Variety (another source I, unfortunately, cannot verify for myself) and says that Dante is better than any of the other hypnotists the reviewer has seen over the past 20 years, going as far to say the last time the venue was that full was when Frank Sinatra still owned the place.
Also, something to note is that both of these cuttings referred to him as Dr. Dante, despite him not actually holding the necessary qualifications. While there is a long tradition of hypnotists adding Dr. to their name, this is an interesting deviation from other, legit, cuttings of the time.
However, it does note that Dante hypnotized 27 people and “took them to Disneyland” which sounds like a euphemism but does seem to be a running part of his act.
With a famous marriage, Dante’s fame grew, netting him more and more bookings. However, the marriage only lasted six months. Turner says she wrote Dante a $35,000 check to help with an investment but Dante ran off with the money.
Turner then accused Dante of stealing $100,000 of jewelry from her and ended up suing him. At the trial, Dante produced a document that said he got $200,000 if he and Turner broke up. Turner said she had never seen the document before and the court ruled in her favor, making Dante pay her $25,000 in damages.
It really seemed like the divorce didn’t slow down Dante one bit, he continued to do shows and continued to get good reviews. However, in 1975 things took a sour turn.
Dante was arrested for trying to convince another man to help him in a plan to kill rival hypnotist Dr. Michael Dean. Unluckily for Dante, this man happened to be an undercover cop who arrested him.
Dean and Dante had known each other for 15 years, with Dante even saying that he and Dean had learned hypnosis together. Dean, however, said that Dante had copied his act and that Dante had wanted to move into the San Diego county area where Dean had a long-running show.
Dante’s lawyer argued that Dante had an addiction to prescription barbituates and these impaired his decision making and Dante himself argued it was a set-up and that Dean had paid off the cop. Despite this Dante was found guilty of attempted murder in the second degree and sentenced to 7-20 years in prison. Dante went into Arizona State Penitentiary from February 1976 to June 1978, when he was released on parole.
Apparently being an ex-felon didn’t hurt his bookings, with him quickly getting a two-year stint at Knotts Berry Farm.
In 1985 Dante set up a hypnosis education course and took out massive ads in newspapers in Houston, Portland, Atlanta and Chicago offering the chance to become a hypnotherapist.
He was now calling himself Dr. Dante, saying that he got the qualification from the American Hypnotherapists Association or the AHA. The AHA was actually something Dante had set up himself for the sole purpose of giving himself the fake title.
Luckily, two journalists went to the Chicago presentations, Jeffrey Zaslow of The Wall Street Journal and Eric Zorn of The Chicago Tribune. both of whom give wonderful write-ups of the day.
Those who responded to the adverts in the Chicago Tribune offering “Free” hypnosis seminars would be greeted into the room by music which is described by Zorn as:
``The Official Album of Disneyland and Walt Disney World,`` a pastiche of buoyant Americana and a salute to ripe and immense fantasies, the very things that had drawn the crowd.
Once again Disneyland playing a role. I’m a nerd who actually has a copy of that album and I can only presume the music was from The Main Street Electrical Parade mostly because I presume the music from “The Country Bear Jamboree” was a little too on the nose.
Zorn goes on to describe the advert from the Tribune a little, noting that it features many pictures of Dante with different famous people.
Down the right side of the page, in an attempt, one assumes, to lend credibility to his free seminar, were three snapshots of Dr. Dante, each one showing off a different hairdo of his. One photo was of Dr. Dante in brown, wavy locks ``with wife, movie star Lana Turner.`` Another was of Dr. Dante with short, white hair ``being interviewed by Johnny Carson.`` And the last was of Dr. Dante in short, black ringlets ``with first heart surgeon Dr. Christian (sic) Barnard.``
Zaslow also makes note that these pictures are on the wall of the room the talk is held in, really trying to make Dante seem prestigious.
However, one of these photos would cause an issue. The photo of Johnny Carson actually led to Carson suing Dante for $51 million. Carson’s lawyer saying:
the photo was taken with Carson's permission 'sixteen or seventeen years ago,' but Dante has no right to use it in advertising.
While I can’t be certain, I think this might be the picture in question. It is one of the pictures featured in Dante’s press pack.
To note, while Johnny Carson was the host of The Tonight Show, this picture is not on the set of that show as Dante was never on it. When asked about it by Zorn, Dante said it was when Carson was doing something else, but he couldn’t confirm what exactly that other thing was.
Once people have had time to enjoy the music and to soak in the various images of Dante hobnobbing with the rich and famous, Dante would come onto the stage and pitch the full course to those there, saying such things like:
“An ex-cab driver and a former Western Union deliveryman "with a twitch" each earn $12,000 a week as hypnotherapists”
"hypnotherapists can be in every neighborhood, like 7-Elevens."
Dante also claimed that the Wall Street Journal called Hypnotherapy the boom career of the 1980s, something that the Wall Street Journal kindly denied by suggesting he got them mixed up with “another publication”.
Those who were swung by the pitch were asked to put down $395 dollars to do the full weekend course.
During these seminars, another man called Bob Gold would join Dante to talk about the Mind Science Church, a group that had formed in 1949 and one that Dante was on the board of directors for.
Basically, the Mind Science Chruch was a breakaway group of Christians who disagreed that hypnotism was evil and formed the MSC as a non-denominational sect to promote the practice.
To quote Zorn (who throws a lovely bit of shade):
They professed that hypnosis and prayer were very similar activities and that ministers were analogous to coaches or teachers. They used the biblical passage wherein God puts Adam to sleep as the scriptural cornerstone of their faith. Gold can quote it for you, roughly.
Now, I think the passage they mean would be Genesis 2:21 which in the King James Bible reads:
And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
Their aim was to get as many of their congregation certified in hypnotherapy as possible, saying that:
`We have no priests or ministers,` he says. `Except that everyone who learns hypnotherapy, in our eyes, is a minister of our faith, whether he belongs to another faith or not.`
Which is very interesting as it makes me a minister for them, which is impressive considering I hadn’t heard of them until like a week ago.
Those who went to the full weekend course would be greeted on Saturday morning by Dante in a doctor’s coat and stethoscope who would work to teach them all about hypnosis.
Dante started by explaining that all hypnosis is self-hypnosis and that the basics can be taught in an hour, but the real skill comes with practice. He then went on to give attendees a basic script to use and did a basic Q&A session.
He then handed out spiral disks to use as a fixation object, along with pink and blue cards containing the “hypnotic script” and had attendees practice on one another for a while.
On Sunday evening Dante handed out diplomas and offered to sell those present a $198 kit containing fixation objects and other things to help them be a hypnotherapist, before giving two final pieces of advice.
The first was to decorate your office with books and diplomas and the second was not to try and hypnotize family and friends as they know you too well and wouldn’t take you seriously.
While you might doubt these courses would sell, the ones held in 1986 netted Dante $3 million, putting him in the Guinness World Records book for “highest ever lecture fee”.
It should be noted, while obviously a scam this was before things like hypnosis and hypnotherapy were regulated and thus anyone could declare they had a diploma in hypnotherapy without fear of repercussion or legal trouble.
Dante also set up a permanent make-up college called “Perma-Derm Academy”. This college offered to teach makeup artists how to do permanent make up using tattoos, something Dante insists he was one of the first people to do. However, the school was highly sub-par with several students saying they were taught how to apply the makeup by using ballpoint pens on cantaloupe melons.
This got him into legal trouble as according to the Federal Trade Commission, he misrepresented his school as an accredited institution and misrepresented what the course offered. He was ordered to immediately stop and repay $143,750 of the almost 1.5 million dollars he had made running the school. As part of this settlement, he was made to agree to not run such institutions again.
In the April of 1997, the FTC started “Project Scofflaw” aimed at enforcing FTC court orders and making sure those who had agreed to not run misleading programmes actually followed through. It turned out Dante had not and was still offering the misleading programme.
In fact, he had just renamed his company to “Permanetics Inc” and he had also set up the “American Professional Institute” a paralegal training firm which advertised that its graduates could make lots of money, despite the school holding none of the required accreditations.
Dante was arrested and was sentenced to 67 months in prison for contempt of court. However, before the last day of his trial in the November of 1997 Dante is said to have told his lawyer that they should flee “either north or south”. Dante chose to flee to Mexico and was sentenced in absentia in 1998.
Dante lived on his yacht just outside the Mexican city of Ensenada for two years. However, in 2000 ABC featured him and his scams on their show 20/20. Apparently, Dante gave an interview from the deck of his yacht, this interview was said to be heavily mocking of those who had fallen for his scams, however, I can’t find footage from the show to confirm this.
Soon after Dante was arrested re-entering the US and sent to prison for the crimes he committed in 1998. Dante insists that the Mexican federal police kidnapped him and dragged him back across the border but no record of such actions has ever been found.
In 2003, while serving his 1998 contempt charge, the FBI indited Dante once more for mail fraud. Since 1996 Dante had been running the “Columbia State University“ a correspondence school that alleged to be an accredited university but was, in fact, a diploma mill.
The CSU ran adverts in major publications declaring:
University Degree in 27 Days!
Bachelor's, Master's, Doctorate
Legal, legitimate, and fully accredited. School rings available.
Its pitch was that students could use their work history and partially completed courses to get a degree in record time provided they paid the fee and did the tiniest bit of work (which mostly amounted to filling out a form).
To quote from the official FBI inditement:
According to court documents, Pellar set up Columbia State University in 1996 at a business office in San Clemente. CSU falsely represented itself to be a government-approved university in Louisiana and it falsely claimed to have faculty and accreditation sufficient to confer bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees by correspondence in as little as one month. Pellar created promotional materials, including a university catalog, that falsely told prospective students that CSU had an administration composed of Ph.Ds and medical doctors and that it had received full accreditation from legitimate accreditation agencies. The catalog cover featured a photograph of a building that bore no relation to the fictitious CSU or its San Clemente office. The mailing address was in Metairie, Louisiana, but in reality that was only a mail forwarding service that simply resent all correspondence to CSU's addresses in Southern California. The indictment alleges that, in November 1997, Pellar fled the U.S. and continued to direct the activities of CSU from Mexico through subordinates.
The indictment alleges that CSU took in more than $10 million from students around the country in tuition fees during the scheme. The indictment alleges that students around the country were defrauded because CSU gave them the impression that it was a legitimate academic institution, but in reality, it was nothing more than a diploma mill.
The US Senate hearings into CSU had a former employee testify that while the CSU has a gross income of around $20 million it had no educational staff and no facilities and that the ten-person board of directors was nothing more than a list of made up names and titles.
The school had even advertised that Joans Salk, the inventor of the Polio vaccine had an honorary Ph.D. from them. A claim that was only removed when Salk himself complained about the lie.
Dante pleaded guilty to nine counts of mail fraud, he was ordered to pay back $45,835 and forfeit the $1.5 million yacht as well as serving 8 months in prison.
Upon his release, Dante mostly stayed out of the public eye, in 2006 it was said he was living in a trailer park. However, in 2010 he was thrust into the limelight once more as a film about his life, entitled “Mr. Hypnotism” was shown at SXSW.
To end, I would like to quote part of J. Harry Jones’ interview with Dante from his 2006 Chicago Union-Tribune Article:
He proudly produces a copy of “Marquis Who's Who” from 1993, which lists Ronald Pellar as holding a doctorate from Columbia State University and of having been a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps.
Is the Marine Corps reference true?
Dante smiled slightly. “Of course not,” he said.