Emily Blunt wears a Hamilton Lady Hamilton A-2

Before she married J. Robert Oppenheimer in 1940, Kitty had been married three times: one marriage annulled, one ended when Joe Dallet died in 1937, one finished in divorce. She was a biologist and botanist, and a Communist Party member until the late 1930s, admitted, the record says, only after proving her loyalty by distributing copies of the Daily Worker on the streets. Emily Blunt plays her in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, the 2023 film that won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture and took 975.8 million dollars worldwide.

Hamilton put six vintage watches into the film, all of them, by the brand's own account, sourced from collectors rather than from its extensive archives, and the Lady Hamilton A-2 is the one that went to Blunt: an ornate 14 karat gold piece dated 1947. First Class Watches, walking through the lineup, called it a beautiful 14k white gold 1947 Lady Hamilton A-2, and the screen agrees: in the clothesline scene the tiny watch catches the light as white metal on an ornate bracelet, more jewelry than instrument.

The pairing of director and brand goes back further than this film. First Class Watches traces it to Interstellar in 2014, when Nolan contacted Hamilton about building a custom watch, a job that took over a year and meant removing the mechanical movement entirely to make space for a big enough battery; Nolan, an admirer of 2001: A Space Odyssey, knew Hamilton had made a custom piece for Kubrick too. By Oppenheimer the relationship had settled into restraint: no custom builds, no replica line announced, just six borrowed watches returned to period duty, with the only woman among the three wearers carrying the newest and smallest of them.