Hilary Swank wears a Longines Spirit 40.5

Mira Nair's Amelia (2009) puts a Longines on Hilary Swank's wrist, and the brand is right even if the watch is not. The prop is a Longines Spirit 40.5 (ref. L2.700.4.23.6), a cushion-cased automatic with a white dial, bold Arabic numerals, date window at three, and poire hands. It is a clean, handsome watch that looks plausible on a 1930s aviator. But the real Amelia Earhart wore a Longines mono-pusher chronograph powered by calibre 13.33Z, one of the first wristwatch chronograph movements ever made, with two subsidiary dials and a 35mm silver case. The Spirit is a time-and-date piece. It tells you what time it is. Earhart's chronograph let her time fuel consumption and calculate ground speed over the Atlantic.

The cal. 13.33Z gave her that with a single pusher integrated into the crown, a column wheel, and an instantaneous-jumping minute counter inherited from Longines' pocket chronograph tradition. Prop departments routinely substitute modern pieces for fragile vintage ones, and the original is a museum artifact anyway, so the swap is understandable.

Earhart's Longines survived her. She gave it to Harry Gordon Selfridge Jr., son of the London department store founder, shortly before her final flight in 1937. In return, Selfridge gave her a gold Patek Philippe chronograph originally commissioned for Sir Henry Segrave, the British speed record holder who died during a water speed attempt on Lake Windermere in 1930. Earhart was reportedly wearing the Patek when she disappeared over the Pacific. The Longines caseback reads: This watch was worn by Amelia Earhart on her two transatlantic flights and presented by her to H.G.S. Jr. just before her death. It passed through Fay Gillis Wells, a fellow aviatrix and Ninety-Nines charter member, and in 2010 traveled to the International Space Station aboard Soyuz TMA-19 with astronaut Shannon Walker, arriving on June 17, exactly 82 years after Earhart's first Atlantic crossing. It now lives at The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots in Oklahoma City.