Straps worn on the Connery Rolex ref. 6538

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As is broadly known, Sean Connery appears to wear a Rolex ref. 6538 in the first four Eon Productions Bond films. It is also generally known that he wore the watch on a leather strap in the first of the two films (“Dr. No” and “From Russia With Love”), and on a one-piece nylon strap in the latter two films (“Goldfinger” and “Thunderball”). It seems most likely that the Rolex was owned personally by Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, one of the producers. Details are quite scarce on the leather strap, and there exists a lot of misinformation about the nylon strap. There are no known photographs of the watch being worn by Broccoli, so it is not known for sure what strap or bracelet it was on just prior to the production of “Dr. No.”

THE LEATHER STRAP

 It is often asserted that the strap was black, but on closer examination of many scenes from both “Dr. No” and “From Russia With Love,” it strongly appears to have been a dark brown color. The color of the buckle is not as clear cut; in the best still of the buckle I’ve seen it looks at first glance to be gold in color, but it could easily be silver in color and simply reflecting the tree Connery is resting against in the photo. There are very few photographs that do a good job of communicating the texture of the strap, but there is one publicly photo I’ve seen that seems to suggest it was alligator or crocodile. This is intriguing, as my understanding is that crocodile/alligator was quite expensive in the early sixties, and usually paired with gold watches (making the color of buckle perhaps likely to have been gold, as it appears). If it indeed was crocodile or alligator as it appears to have been, I’m inclined to believe this was the personal strap of Cubby Broccoli, as I think it unlikely the production would have given it that much attention. There is however one somewhat interesting peculiarity about the strap: If one looks closely at some stills, they appear to show that the strap was actually 19mm, not quite fitting the 20mm lugs of the Rolex. This is particularly apparent in a shot in “From Russia With Love” shortly before Bond steals the Lecter. This is fairly humorous, given the later nylon strap was 16mm, so at no point in time was the watch ever worn onscreen with a fitting strap.

THE NYLON STRAP

It is usually asserted that the nylon strap was a NATO variant, or at least a military strap of some description; this is nonsense:

1. The first specification for the NATO strap - DefStan 66-4 Issue 1 - was published in August of 1968; principal photography for “Goldfinger” began in January of 1964
2. Aside from being one piece nylon straps, there is very little in common between the NATO strap and the Bond strap; the NATO strap has metal keepers while the Bond strap has a fixed nylon keeper, the buckle of the NATO strap is rectangular while the buckle of the Bond strap is horseshoe shaped, the NATO strap uses chrome plated brass hardware while the Bond strap has the duller appearance of nickel plating, the NATO strap was defined as being either “steel gray” or “admiralty gray” (depending on the revision of the standard) while the Bond strap features black (or possibly dark blue) and green stripes with red piping, on paper the NATO strap was either 18.5mm or 18mm +/- 0.5mm (depending on the revision of the standard) while the Bond strap was 16mm.
3. I have access to a strap that appears to be almost identical to Bond strap, only with navy blue and red stripes with green piping, and brushed brass buckle (but of the right general shape). The only other difference I can detect is that the Bond strap appears to have had 7 holes, while this strap has 8. This strap has no military provenance, it appears to be just a cheap commercial watch strap, purchased by my dad perhaps 15 years ago at a (now demolished) antique shop in Bothell, Washington of all places.

In all likelihood the leather watch strap failed by the time principal photography of “Goldfinger” began necessitating a replacement, and the most expedient strap available was thrown on with next to no thought. It’s even possible the strap originally belonged to a member of the crew, like a grip. The Cuba scene featuring the best closeup of the watch in the whole series was filmed at Pinewood Studios very early in the production, making it likely this is the only strap worn on the watch in the film.

AFTER THUNDERBALL

At this point the watch drops completely off the map. We neither have solid evidence that Connery returned the watch to Broccoli, nor that Connery ever wore it again on or off screen. What is known is that by “You Only Live Twice” the relationship between Connery snd Broccoli became severely strained to say the least. Probably the best likely outcome is that Connery did in fact return the watch when their professional and personal relationship degraded, Broccoli kept but retired the watch, and it now exists today in the possession of the Broccoli family somewhere. If that’s not the case, it seems unlikely the watch will ever resurface with provenance