Leonardo DiCaprio wears an unidentified watch

In Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar (2011), Judi Dench plays Annie Hoover, the mother J. Edgar Hoover lived with well into adulthood. Here she lies in bed with her eyes closed while DiCaprio's Hoover leans close at her bedside, hands clasped against his face. Just above the shirt cuff sits a gold rectangular watch on a black leather strap, its pale dial turned toward the inside of his wrist.

The film runs from 1919 to Hoover's death in 1972, framed by an aging Hoover dictating his side of the story to a relay of young agents at a typewriter. At one point he tells a skeptical ghostwriter that a man's legacy is determined by where the story ends. Costume designer Deborah Hopper used the wardrobe to keep those decades legible, dressing DiCaprio through some 80 costume changes and moving him from single-breasted suits in nubby brown fabrics to double-breasted three-piece suits in grays and navy as Hoover climbed. Two of the smallest character touches were a crisply folded white pocket square and a wristwatch worn with its face on the inside of the wrist.

Hopper researched the men themselves. The real Hoover and Clyde Tolson were exacting about their appearance, down to the pocket squares, watch fobs, tie tacks and cuff links they wore, and Hoover was particular about his hats. In the production notes Hopper called him impeccable, always professional-looking and meticulous.

The watch itself has never been identified. No watch publication or auction record names a brand or model for it, and the dial in this frame is too soft to read. What the still does show is a gold rectangular case on a black strap, with the face sitting on the palm side of the wrist, the same detail the costume design specified.