Humphrey Bogart wears a Longines Evidenza

By 1949 Humphrey Bogart had a habit of showing up on set wearing his own watch. The one he favored was a gold Longines, a barrel-cased Art Deco piece on a gold bracelet, engraved on the back with his initials, H.B. It had already made its screen debut in Casablanca, and it sits today in the Longines museum in Switzerland. Longines would later build a campaign around Bogart and his Sabrina co-star Audrey Hepburn, on the line elegance is an attitude.

In Knock on Any Door he plays Andrew Morton, a defense attorney who climbed out of the same slum as his client. Nicholas Ray, a film or two into his career, directs Bogart as he defends John Derek's Nick Romano, a young man on trial for killing a policeman, a kid who lives by the creed that you should live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse. Through the courtroom scenes a gold dress watch rides on Morton's wrist on a metal bracelet, consistent with that personal Longines. The dial never turns far enough toward the camera to read, and no published account pins this particular film, so the call leans on the bracelet and on Bogart's well-known habit rather than a clear look. He owned a gold Gruen too, which keeps this at likely rather than certain.