Cliff Robertson wears a Hamilton Pulsar P2

A little over a year after Nixon resigned, Sydney Pollack released a thriller about a low-level CIA reader who steps out for lunch and comes back to find everyone in his office shot dead. Robert Redford plays Joe Turner, the bookish analyst who pulls a thread no one man can follow to its end; David Rayfiel and Lorenzo Semple Jr. adapted it from James Grady's novel. Cliff Robertson is J. Higgins, the CIA's New York deputy director, a company man who manages the fallout and never quite lets Turner see whether he can be trusted. Max von Sydow plays the assassin on Turner's trail and Faye Dunaway the stranger he abducts and then hides out with.

Higgins wears a Hamilton Pulsar P2, the steel version of the first LED digital watch. Hamilton had launched the original Pulsar in 1972 in 18-karat gold at $2,100; the P2 dropped the price to a few hundred and kept the trick that made it famous, a blank black face that shows nothing until you press the button, when red numerals flash and then vanish. We see it work when Higgins reads the time off the LED while setting up a meeting.