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Ten Million Ghosts (by Sidney Kingsley; produced and directed by the author). Same day this violent polemic against the world's munitions makers opened in Manhattan last week, the League of Nations estimated that $9,295,000,000 was spent on armaments in 1935. The action of Mr. Kingsley's play, however, closes in 1927. In Ten Million Ghosts, Sir Basil Zaharoff is transformed into ''Zacharey'' (George Coulouris). France's great steel & armaments association, the Comite des Forges, is called "Universe Forges Inc." A young French poet named Andre (Orson Welles) is in love with Madeleine de Kruif (Barbara O'Neil). He becomes a War aviator, goes to the Briey sector in 1917, when the secret machinations of the munitioneers are in full swing. Forbidden to bomb the mines, he understands the reason from the conversations of Zacharey & de Kruif, starts after the mines on his own, is shot down and dies behind the German lines. Madeleine marries Zacharey. who is decorated by three governments.
The last scene is an ornate hotel room in Geneva, where more machinations have disrupted a disarmament conference. A U. S. journalist (Otto Hulett), who has been "selling his soul'' by writing jingoistic trash for a U. S. jingo newspaper tycoon, decides to stop it even if it costs him his job, reads the riot act to Zacharey, loudly swears to spend the rest of his life exposing him.
In Dead End and Pulitzer Prizewinning Men in White, Sidney Kingsley was given more credit for the validity and sincerity of his dramatic ideas than for his way of handling the tools of his craft. In Ten Million Ghosts this discrepancy is even wider. The characters move in an atmosphere of unreality. Verified facts are blurted so awkwardly that they assume a cloak of incredibility. Furthermore, most spectators will agree that the thesis that armament makers are the sole cause of war is too old and battered for adult consideration. Best feature of Ten Million Ghosts is the settings-particularly one of a Universe Forges gun works-by 34-year-old Donald Oenslager, who is making a strong bid to add his name to those of Norman Bel Geddes (see p. 47), Lee Simonson, Jo Mielziner and Robert Edmond Jones as one of the ablest stage designers in the U. S.