A THOUSAND TIRESOME MONKEYS
Hypnotism – Peter Casson
Peter Casson (1921-1995) was a wildly successful – and wildly publicised – stage hypnotist who rose to fame in the late 40s and 50s, and who was famously known as the hypnotist that the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) didn’t dare to televise.
Casson began life as a working-class Yorkshireman and served as a Royal Marines radar operator during the Second World War. Whilst serving, he put the talent he’d developed for hypnotism in his teenage years to use. He wanted to open a chain of ‘psycho-therapeutic clinics’ across post-war Britain, but, lacking the funds and the profile, saw an opportunity in variety stage performance. And so he took to the stage, with his youth (he was in his early 20s), “sober” style, lack of stooges, and, no doubt, the novelty and juxtaposition of his lower class and Northern accent in such a powerful role as ‘The Hypnotist’ piquing the interest of theatrical manager Jack Lister.
Despite his disinterest in becoming a vaudeville performer, Casson connected with Lister upon his discharge from the army and his hypnosis act was strongly billed in Lister’s travelling show of ex-service people. Casson was a sensation and, within three years, made history by having the first one-man-show in the music halls in 1948.
Such was Casson’s ascendency to fame, television naturally came a’callin. In 1946*, the BBC attempted some test filming only for Casson to all-too-successfully hypnotise some crew members as well as the volunteers. The Beeb chickened out of broadcasting Casson for fear lone home viewers might get ‘stuck in hypnosis’ without someone there to rouse them.
Casson never did translate to TV. But he capitalised on the legend of being ‘too good’ for broadcast, regularly selling out 2,000-seat theatres and gaining extensive press coverage. He succeeded in his ambition of opening a clinic in his native Yorkshire in circa 1949, and reportedly devoted one week in three to freely helping people with his ‘psycho-therapeutic’ work while at the height of his entertainment earning potential.
While not wholly accepted by the British medical community, Casson’s devotion to these more serious applications of hypnotism saw him invited to lecture on topics such as psychotherapy, painless childbirth, and natural anaesthesia as a respected and relevant contributor to the field. He also lent his air of seriousness to efforts to regulate stage hypnotism, founding the Federation of Ethical Stage Hypnotists in 1979, and was vocal about sham practices like past-life regression.
With the sun setting on variety, Casson opened his own theatre night-club in Barnsley, which nurtured future talents including magician Paul Daniels. He continued to sell out shows in the UK and beyond up to the age of 70, when he gave a final performance at the London Palladium theatre to draw the curtains on his stage career.
I thought it useful to put Casson into context before delving into this promotional booklet from circa 1949 – the height of Casson’s variety and post-BBC fame. Otherwise it’s a pretty weird read – like comparing a Derren Brown playbill with that of an end-of-pier performer 70 years hence without knowing the difference.
Firstly, top marks for the cover! I’m loving the design and inclusion of the mysterious dotted triangle and mystical star. Not to mention the splash of colour. Inside, we’re treated to a dreamy portrait shot of Casson followed by a foreword (reluctantly) written by his theatrical manager Lister, describing his star’s discovery and ascent.
Inside, readers will find essays on ‘The Facts of Hypnotism’ and ‘What is Hypnotism?’ written in Casson’s famed “sober” style. While he comes across as credible, and a little cross, I’m not satisfied Casson successfully establishes the facts or answers; the key takeaway is that he’s right and everyone else is wrong, and you probably shouldn’t be meddling with this stuff anyway… but you can if you must.
The booklet is packed with photos and promotional materials. I particularly enjoyed the centrefold “Pretty Girl” being hypnotised (pictured left) – actually an early TV presenter called Gillian Webb, and who features in similar hypnotic experiment photos throughout. There’s also a surreal composite of portrait shots (below right) that I feel is sadly absent from modern publicity shot tastes. Meanwhile, the inclusion of not one, but two shots of Casson drinking a cup of tea after a box-out invitation to write to him with your personal psycho-therapeutic complaints made me lol.
There’s also an abundance of contemporary press clippings, including a longer-form account by a Daily Mail journalist in 1947 who was – rather inconveniently, upon his reflection in this article – hypnotised by Casson to stop smoking cigarettes. (He valiantly took up the pipe instead.) I can see from the clippings how Casson (and Lister) shaped, and set the bar for, how a stage hypnotist could be publicised in the UK and beyond.
That about sums up my insight into Casson’s booklet and life. I hope he is approving of it from ‘The Summerland’. Because he doesn’t have particularly generous views towards women. His essays liken responding to hypnotic suggestion as “a child responds to its mother’s wishes, or a woman to her husband’s.” This then extends into his musings on who makes the best subjects – the stupid or the clever, the man or the woman? Casson finds clever people and men preferable, bringing us to my favourite bit of the booklet:
“As regards men and women, I have found things more or less equal, with men slightly the better subjects. Possibly the reason for this is due to the nature of their employment, as women have more time for day-dreaming and scheming, etc. In other words, their minds run around all over the place (“like a thousand tiresome monkeys”) and they are difficult to tie down to one idea.”
From a man whose ‘moods’ include the back of his head (?), that’s pretty rich.
*The Independent newspaper obituary of my first link incorrectly cites the year as 1952, but this news article places it as 1946.
