Jeff Bridges wears a Rolex Submariner

In 1976, a Rolex Submariner was a tool watch. It cost a few hundred dollars, it was built for divers, and nobody called it a "grail piece" or posted it on Instagram. Jeff Bridges wears one as Jack Prescott in John Guillermin's King Kong remake, and it reads as exactly what it was at the time: a good watch on a working scientist who needs something waterproof.

Bridges was 26 and already a two-time Oscar nominee, for The Last Picture Show and Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. The King Kong role put him opposite Jessica Lange in her film debut and Charles Grodin as an oil company executive chasing resources on an uncharted island. Prescott is a paleontologist who stows away on the expedition, and his no-date Submariner, with a black dial and rotating bezel and no cyclops, stays on his wrist through the jungle, the harbor, and the New York sequences. Hodinkee reads it as a reference 5513, though others place it as the chronometer-rated 5512, and the dial text is never quite clear enough on screen to settle it. Bridges rarely wears shirts with sleeves in this film, so the watch gets more screen time than most.