Interesting. I confess I know virtually nothing about him - but I will probably do some Internet investigating - except a story that's become Hollywood "legend":

In 1940, there was a gangster film with a Jekyll/Hyde theme called Black Friday. The stars were Boris Karloff, Stanley Ridges (an actor totally forgotten today), and, in a smaller supporting role, Bela Lugosi.

Lugosi's crime boss character is, at one point in the film, locked in a small closet and dies from suffocation. At the time, much publicity was given to a rather unusual stunt: Before the scene was shot, Lugosi was hypnotized into believing that he really was suffocating and was going to die as the cameras rolled. Footage was shot of the hypnosis and the aftermath, as well. All this to generate publicity for what what was, essentially, a B-movie gangster flick involving a partial brain transplant. Anyway, it all got a lot of press at the time.

And the "noted hypnotist" involved in the stunt? Manly P. Hall.

Sometime later, it came out that the whole thing was a hoax, and Lugosi was never "really" hypnotized at all. (It was probably the best piece of acting he ever did in his entire career.)

Signor V.