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The Top 5 Rolex References From Iconic Movies
They really are a canny bunch over there at Rolex’s advertising department.
Arguably better than any other luxury brand, they recognize the value of aligning their products with major figures; be they statesmen, politicians, sportsmen and women, business leaders or celebrities.
However, for the vast majority of their history, Rolex marketers have worked very hard to ensure their watches appear on the wrists of these society heavyweights in a completely organic way.
Aside from their ultra-exclusive Testimonee program, the models you see worn in the boardrooms of power or flouncing up the red carpet are the personal property of the wearer; Rolex, with extremely rare exceptions, does not distribute watches to famous personalities to wear in public as some sort of branding exercise.
Nowhere is this more true than in the movie business. The watchmaker’s watchmaker has had a long and fascinating association with the gods of the silver screen. The company has been a sponsor of the Oscars since 2017, becoming the Exclusive Watch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Exclusive Sponsor of the Governors Awards, which honors individuals for lifetime achievement in film. Not just that, Rolex is also a Founding Supporter and the Official Watch of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles.
But their connections at the highest levels of filmmaking go back much further than that. Legendary film noir, The Big Sleep from 1946, is the first accepted appearance of a Rolex watch; an Oyster Perpetual on the arm of the incomparable Humphrey Bogart.
Yet, for all their Hollywood presence, the manufacture has never once paid for product placement in any movie. Instead, their watches are chosen by directors or costume designers, or sometimes the actors themselves, as a way to quickly and cleanly demonstrate certain aspects of the character being played.
Now, obviously, this sort of passive advertising is only possible because of the status Rolex has built for itself over its 120-year history, and each of their watches displays an inherent personality of its own.
For that reason, we have decided to put together a list of the top 5 models to feature in some of the most iconic movies ever made.
Read on below.
The Rolex Submariner ref. 6538 from Dr. No
There is only one place to start, and it is actually proof positive of what we’ve just been talking about.
Long, long before Omega scored their paradigm-shifting (and massively expensive) coup of getting their watches on the wrist of the world’s most famous spy, James Bond’s go-to timekeeper was nearly always a Rolex.
In fact, 007 donned a Rolex even before the first movie hit the screens and changed cinema forever; Fleming’s literary character wore nothing but.
There have been a number of ‘Bond Rolexes’ over the years, but the one which will forever be inescapably linked to the character is the Submariner ref. 6538 from the 1962 debut outing, Dr. No.
As the story goes, the watch belonged to producer and industry giant, Albert ‘Cubby’ Broccoli. The movie’s director, Terence Young, needed a watch suitable for the Bond persona; elegant but rugged, practical yet refined. With a tight budget and no help from Rolex themselves, it is said Cubby simply took off his own Submariner and threw it to Sean Connery a few moments before cameras started rolling. And its reputation was sealed.
Bond wore a Rolex in a further 10 outings across four different actors—Connery, Lazenby, Moore and Dalton. And while I can’t provide you with any figures to back it up, it must go down as one of the biggest Returns on Investment ever. In that, Rolex invested practically nothing and got its watches front and center in the longest-running and one of the most lucrative film franchises of all time.
The Rolex GMT-Master ref. 1675 from Apocalypse Now
Short on laughs, but a towering movie nevertheless, Apocalypse Now from 1979 tells the story of Martin Sheen’s Captain Willard as he is charged with an assassination mission in wartime Vietnam.
Shot through with devastating visuals and timeless quotes, the movie follows Willard as he tracks down the rogue Colonel Kurtz, a once-respected officer now gone insane who has formed a cult army of followers in Cambodia.
Played with god-like intensity by the goliath Marlon Brando, Kurtz is the fallen military genius turned brutal de facto dictator. And what better way for such a looney to tell the time? Why, a Rolex GMT-Master, of course!
The ref. 1675 featured in the film was Brando’s own, originally with a Pepsi bezel. However, the producers felt it was too showy for the gritty jungle setting and asked the actor to remove it. In typical Brando fashion he refused (‘If they’re looking at my watch, then I’m not doing my job as an actor, said the hugely overweight, unprepared and terminally unpunctual star), but he did come up with a compromise. By removing the blue and red bezel and swapping the Oyster bracelet for a plain rubber strap, the watch became an integral component of Kurtz’s character—robust, no-nonsense, functional.
Brando kept the watch after filming, even hand engraving the back with ‘M. Brando’ before gifting it to his daughter, Petra Brando-Fisher in 1995. Kept out of the spotlight for over 20-years, it was auctioned in 2019 and fetched a final price of $1,952,000.
The Rolex Day-Date ref. 18038 from Glengarry Glen Ross
It is hard to think of another watch and character combination as fitting as this.
Alec Baldwin’s sales trainer, Blake in 1992’s Glengarry Glen Ross is a hard-nosed, foul-mouthed creature who manages to steal the entire movie in his one and only scene with a world-famous seven-minute monologue.
Among the quote-worthy bon mots he delivers, along with ‘coffee’s for closers’ and ‘Always Be Closing’, we see Blake taunt the hapless team in front of him with the luxuriousness of his wrist attire. ‘You see this watch,’he says, holding aloft his Rolex Day-Date ref. 18038, ‘that watch costs more than your car.’
Now, I’m very much not saying all Day-Date wearers are as equally slick, aggressive and thoroughly unlikeable as Baldwin’s character, but can you, hand on heart, think of a more appropriate watch for him to wear than the President?
The flagship Rolex has been the number one choice for life’s overachievers since its release in 1956, and in particular, as with Blake’s example, in its all yellow gold finery. Everyone from Warren Buffet to Lyndon Johnson to the Dalai Lama has worn one, and it remains the ultimate symbol of ambition and success—better than a Cadillac Eldorado, better than a set of steak knives and a whole lot better than being fired.
The Rolex Daytona ref. 116528 from The Wolf Of Wall Street
The massively acclaimed biographical satire that is The Wolf of Wall Street is something of a watchspotter’s dream. Keep your eyes peeled and you will see some beauties from the likes of IWC and TAG Heuer.
Rolex also features heavily, of course, with main lead Leonardo DiCaprio and Matthew McConaughey in his brief cameo both wearing pieces from the crown.
However, this being a Scorsese epic, what might seem like throwaway details are, in fact, shrewd hints at status and hierarchy.
The perfect demonstration is the watch worn by Jordan Belfort’s (DiCaprio’s character) second-in-command.
Donnie Azoff, played by Oscar nominated Jonah Hill, spends the movie toting a Rolex Daytona ref. 116528. The solid yellow gold model with its black dial and gold totalizer rings is certainly flashy but, in a subtle reflection of the dynamic between Donnie and Jordan, it’s not quite as flashy as Belfort’s watches.
Further intimations exist if you look closely enough. For instance, at the start of the movie, when Belfort is being given life lessons from the guru-like Mark Hanna (McConaughey), Hanna is seen wearing a Rolesor Datejust, a classic sober executive look. Belfort goes on to sport a Rolex Submariner later in the movie, projecting an edgier, sportier image of a more reckless broker.
It’s amazing how much just a watch can say!
The Rolex Datejust ref. 16013 from American Psycho
Managing to be even more detestable than Glengarry’s Blake or Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko, Patrick Bateman’s murderous investment banker in American Psycho is similarly clad in the armor of an ‘80s city trader.
Alongside his Oliver People’s glasses, Armani overcoats and Valentino suits, the only timekeeper for this indictment of capitalism is the Rolex Datejust ref. 16013.
Except…is it?
The two-tone businessman’s special is definitely the look the movie’s producers were going for but, perhaps unsurprisingly, Rolex were not overly keen to allow one of their biggest ever sellers to be associated with an irredeemable serial killer.
To that end, costume designer Isis Mussenden hunted down the closest equivalent she could find.
And she would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for that meddling 4K remastered print released in 2020. Before the upgraded picture quality found them out, Bateman’s watch looked exactly like the ref. 16013. What is actually was, however, was the Seiko 5 SNXJ90.
In fairness, the similarities are far too numerous to have been accidental. Both have steel cases with yellow gold winding crowns, fluted bezels and central bracelet links—the bracelet on the Seiko being a clear five-link homage to the Rolex Jubilee. Both have champagne dials and both are close to the same size; the Rolex measures 36mm, the Seiko 38mm.
Yet, in the 2020 print you can just about see some differences in Bateman’s watch when compared to the real thing. Firstly, the winding crown is at an odd nearly-four o’clock position as opposed to the Datejust’s three o’clock. Then there’s the double calendar complication (and good luck spotting that even in the remastered edition) which displays both date and day of the week. And thirdly, there’s no Cyclops over the date window.
But this whole ‘cheap thing passing itself off as an expensive thing’ is, whether intentional or not, the ideal metaphor for Christian Bale’s character. A man completely without morals, his obsession for status symbols and the materialistic means he is the kind of person to wear either a fake Rolex or a watch from another brand designed to look like a genuine Datejust. Anything which will upkeep his social standing, regardless of authenticity.
The man and his watch each suffer an identity crisis. After all, as he himself says, ‘he is only an entity, something illusory.’
Featured Photo: BeckerTime’s Archive.
