Ronald Pellar
American hypnotist and fraudster
Ronald Pellar (February 5, 1930 – June 1, 2013) was an American hypnotist and fraudster who performed under the stage names Ronald Dante and Dr. Dante and who was briefly married to actress Lana Turner. He was convicted of or pleaded guilty to several criminal offenses, including mail fraud in connection with his operation of the diploma mill Columbia State University and attempted murder for trying to contract for the murder of another hypnotist and entertainer. As of 2006, he had been listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for 20 years for having been paid the highest-ever lecture fee. He was known by as many as 40 aliases, including Phil Harris, Earl Clevenger, and Bonnie Ritchie.
Early life
Pellar gave different accounts of his age and personal history. In a 2006 interview, Pellar said he was born in 1920; this birthdate is consistent with the age of 49 that was reported in 1969, when he married Lana Turner. In 1985 he was reported to be 57 years old, indicating a birth date in 1927 or 1928. In 2003 he was reported to be 73 years old and in 2004 he was reported to be 74 years old, indicating a birth date in 1929 or 1930.
In a 2006 interview he said that he spent his early childhood in Kuala Lumpur, where his parents and a sister were killed in an attack by Malaysian insurgents, leaving the 5-year-old Ronald Pellar and his 10-year-old brother, who were sent to live in an orphanage in Chicago.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7365167. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1930, 2013, 2006 and 1920.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ronald Pellar” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.