Paul Newman wears an unidentified watch

The most famous shot in The Hustler is the one where Fast Eddie Felson leans all the way down over the green baize, bridges the cue across his fingers, and lines up a shot while a room full of men in the dark watch him work. Paul Newman plays Eddie, a road pool hustler with more talent than discipline. Robert Rossen's 1961 film sets him against Jackie Gleason's Minnesota Fats across an all-night money game, with George C. Scott as the gambler Bert Gordon who wants to own a piece of him and Piper Laurie as Sarah, the one person who sees through him.

Look at his cue hand in that shot and there is a watch on his wrist, slipping out from under the white shirt cuff. It is round, with a pale dial and a crown at three o'clock on a plain strap. That is as far as the film lets you get. The print is black and white and the watch never holds still long enough to read, so there is no honest way to put a brand on it. Newman would go on to become one of the most collected names in watches, the man whose Rolex Daytona now carries his nickname, but that was years away. Here, it is just a watch on a hustler's wrist, and no one has ever been able to say whose.