After working at a number of different jobs from his mid-teens, he published his first novel in 1936 and had an immediate and very considerable success with it, both critically and financially. Between 1936 and 1940, he published six novels in total, each one a best-seller, winning him an international audience. By the end of World War II, four of these six books had been filmed, three of them in Hollywood. However, after this prolific beginning, Ambler published nothing at all between 1940 and 1951. His wartime army service led him into making propaganda films, and he remained in the film world for some time after the war, producing as well as writing films. It is notable that a majority of these films do not fall into the suspense or espionage genres in which he had made his name.