Eric AmblerFilmography

Love Hate Love

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Peter Haskell, Ryan O'Neal, Lesley Ann Warren

Synopsis: Seldom has a TV-movie title been more appropriate than Love Hate Love. Ryan O'Neal, Lesley Ann Warren and Peter Haskell comprise the three points of an unfortunate love triangle. Ms. Warren is a fashion model engaged to engineer O'Neal; she falls in love on a whim with charismatic playboy Haskell. Read More

Topkapi

Crew: Book Author

Actors: Melina Mercouri, Peter Ustinov, Maximilian Schell, Robert Morley, Akim Tamiroff

Synopsis: After years of enduring movie lampoons of his 1955 crime-caper classic Rififi, director Jules Dassin topped them all with his own spoof, Topkapi. It's a rather disreputable crew that teams for the elaborate jewel theft masterminded by Maximillian Schell. Sexy Melina Mercouri (Mrs. Dassin) is Read More

Epitaph for a Spy

Crew: Book Author

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Act of Faith

Crew: Screenwriter

Synopsis: This episode marks a rare foray into television by famed mystery writer Eric Ambler. George Grizzard plays a starving author named Alan Chatterton, who hopes that he can persuade established novelist Ralston Temple (Dennis King) to finance Chatterton's latest book. Though Chatterton turns out to Read More

The Wreck of the Mary Deare

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Gary Cooper, Charlton Heston, Michael Redgrave, Emlyn Williams, Richard Harris, Cecil Parker

Synopsis: Talented special effects and adventure director Michael Anderson (Around the World in 80 Days, 1956) keeps the suspense going in this drama about the wreck of the Mary Deare. John Sands (Charleton Heston) is the captain of a salvage ship that is almost rammed by the apparently abandoned Mary Read More

A Night to Remember

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Kenneth More, Honor Blackman, Anthony Bushell, Ronald Allen, Robert Ayres, Jane Downs, Jill Dixon

Synopsis: This meticulous re-creation of the sinking of the Titanic was adapted by Eric Ambler from the best-selling book by Walter Lord, and it preceded the blockbuster Titanic by almost 40 years. The film covers the life and death of the huge vessel from its launching celebration to that fateful night of Read More

The Yangtse Incident

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Richard Todd, William Hartnell, Akim Tamiroff, Donald Houston, Keye Luke

Synopsis: The Yangtse Incident is the saga of the Amethyst, a British vessel left stranded in China during the Communist takeover. The British government tries to reclaim the Amethyst, only to run up against a Great Wall of Red bureaucracy and propaganda. It is up to Lieutenant Commander Kearns (Richard Todd Read More

Climax!: Journey Into Fear

Crew: Book Author

Synopsis: First filmed under the supervision of Orson Welles in 1942, Eric Ambler's espionage thriller Journey Into Fear was effectively adapted to an hour-long format fourteen years later by by the CBS dramatic anthology Climax. John Forsythe stars as Graham Johnson, an American engineer working on a Read More

Lease of Life

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Robert Donat, Kay Walsh, Adrienne Corri, Denholm Elliott, Walter Fitzgerald

Synopsis: Lease of Life was the next-to-last film in the relatively short cinema career of actor Robert Donat. Written for the screen by Eric Ambler, the story is set in a small rural community, where William Thorn (Donat) serves as parson. Upon learning that he has only a year to live, Thorn begins to see Read More

The Purple Plain

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Gregory Peck, Win Min Than, Bernard Lee, Maurice Denham, Ram Gopal, Lyndon Brook

Synopsis: An H.E. Bates novel was the source for this psychological wartime drama set in Burma. Canadian pilot Gregory Peck and two comrades-in-arms crash in the Burmese wilds. The three men are forced to hack and crawl their way to safety, surrounded on all sides by the Japanese. Peck's subordinates don't Read More

Shoot First

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Joel McCrea, Evelyn Keyes, Herbert Lom, Roland Culver, Marius Goring

Synopsis: Scripted by Eric Ambler from a novel by Geoffrey Household, the British Rough Shoot top-bills Hollywood stars Joel McCrea and Evelyn Keyes. McCrea plays Taine, an American colonel stationed in England. When he spots what appears to be a prowler, Taine tries to scare the fellow away with a round of Read More

The Cruel Sea

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Jack Hawkins, Donald Sinden, John Stratton, Denholm Elliott, Stanley Baker

Synopsis: In this seagoing military drama set in World War II, Lt. Comdr. Ericson (Jack Hawkins) is made captain of a British corvette, a small escort vessel used to guide and protect convoys traveling through the Atlantic. Ericson had his confidence severely shaken during his last command, in which he lost Read More

The Promoter

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Alec Guinness, Petula Clark, Glynis Johns, Valerie Hobson, Edward Chapman

Synopsis: The Promoter was based on the Arnold Bennett novel The Card, which served as its British release title. Impoverished young clerk Alec Guinness works his way up the financial ladder until he has become a successful and highly respected loan officer. Actually, Guinness is not as above-board as the Read More

The Magic Box

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Robert Donat, Margaret Johnston, Maria Schell, Robert Beatty, John Charlesworth, James Kenney

Synopsis: The Magic Box was the English film industry's contribution to the 1951 Festival of Britain. Its all-star cast generously forsook their usual salaries for the privilege of paying tribute to that unsung pioneer of cinema, William Friese-Greene, here played by Robert Donat. Adapted by Eric Ambler Read More

Encore

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Nigel Patrick, Roland Culver, Alison Leggatt, Kay Walsh, Glynis Johns, Charles Victor, Ronald Squire

Synopsis: The producers of Quartet and Trio concluded their cycle with this omnibus film, which features three stories based, as in the previous film, on tales by W. Somerset Maugham. "The Ant and the Grasshopper" concerns Tom Ramsey (Nigel Patrick), a fiscally unstable young man who is constantly borrowing Read More

Highly Dangerous

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Margaret Lockwood, Dane Clark, Marius Goring, Naunton Wayne, Michael Hordern

Synopsis: Britain's Margaret Lockwood is teamed with Hollywood's Dane Clark in Highly Dangerous. Set in a mythical Iron Curtain country, the film casts Lockwood as an entomologist who hopes to stop a planned volley of bacteriological warfare. Facing danger at every turn, our heroine is rescued time and Read More

The Clouded Yellow

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Jean Simmons, Trevor Howard, Sonia Dresdel, Barry Jones, Kenneth More, Maxwell Reed

Synopsis: The Clouded Yellow stars Trevor Howard as David Sommers, a former member of the British Secret Service. After the war, Sommers takes a low-profile job cataloguing butterfly specimens. While thus employed, he make the acquaintance of Sophie Malraux (Jean Simmons), a curious young lady who seems to Read More

The Passionate Friends

Crew: Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Ann Todd, Claude Rains, Trevor Howard, Betty Ann Davies, Isabel Dean

Synopsis: David Lean directed this romantic drama, scripted by Eric Ambler from a novel by H.G. Wells. Mary Justin (Ann Todd) is married to wealthy financier Howard Justin (Claude Rains), and while their marriage allows her to lead a comfortable lifestyle, there's little excitement in their relationship. Read More

The October Man

Crew: Book Author, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Adrianne Allen, John Mills, Joan Greenwood, Felix Aylmer, George Benson, Edward Chapman, Joyce Carey, Esme Beringer, Kay Walsh, John Boxer

Synopsis: Adapted by Eric Ambler from his own novel, The October Man centers around Jim Ackland (played by John Mills), who has been involved in a terrible accident that killed a friend's daughter and has given Ackland a brain injury. Despondent after his release from the hospital, Ackland moves into a Read More

Hotel Reserve

Crew: Book Author

Actors: James Mason, Lucie Mannheim, Raymond Lovell, Julien Mitchell

Synopsis: Based on the Eric Ambler novel entitled "Epitaph for a Spy," this is the story of a medical student on the Riviera during the Summer before WWII begins. A refugee from Austria, he has been photographing wildlife. When the film he develops contains secret installations, he must prove that he is not Read More

The Way Ahead

Crew: Book Author, Screenwriter

Actors: David Niven, Raymond Huntley, William Hartnell, Stanley Holloway, James Donald

Synopsis: The Immortal Battalion has a bit of a convoluted history. It started life as a training film, The New Lot, which ran 44 minutes. When Winston Churchill approached David Niven about creating a film that would do for the British Army what In Which We Serve had done for the Royal Navy, he contacted Read More

The Mask of Dimitrios

Crew: Book Author

Actors: Sydney Greenstreet, Zachary Scott, Faye Emerson, Peter Lorre, Victor Francen

Synopsis: Zachary Scott made his screen debut in this clever bit of film noir that has gained a cult reputation in recent years. Dutch mystery novelist Cornelius Leyden (Peter Lorre) is travelling through Istanbul when he meets Col. Haki (Kurt Katch), head of the secret police and a big fan of Read More

Background to Danger

Crew: Book Author

Actors: George Raft, Brenda Marshall, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Osa Massen

Synopsis: Eric Ambler's intriguing novel Uncommon Danger is brought down to a Republic serial level in Warner Bros.' Background to Danger. George Raft, who always seems miscast, plays an American undercover intelligence agent operating in Turkey. Sultry Osa Massen passes on some valuable secret papers to Raft Read More

Journey into Fear

Crew: Book Author

Actors: Joseph Cotten, Dolores Del Rio, Ruth Warrick, Orson Welles, Jack Durant, Agnes Moorehead

Synopsis: Orson Welles had planned to produce, direct and star in RKO's Journey Into Fear, but prior commitments compelled him to vacate the director's chair in favor of Norman Foster. Joseph Cotten, who starred as an American gunnery engineer up to his armpits in international intrigue, adapted the Read More