Paul Newman wears a Rolex Cosmograph Daytona

The still that survives from Winning is a victory-podium shot: Paul Newman, playing the Indy driver Frank Capua, at the edge of the platform in a white fire suit and brown racing gloves, goggles slung across his chest, beside a sashed beauty queen holding the Redburne 200 trophy and a rival driver with the champagne. James Goldstone's 1969 film follows Capua chasing a win at Indianapolis while his marriage to Elora, played by Newman's real wife Joanne Woodward, comes apart. It is the film usually credited with lighting Newman's lifelong passion for racing. What it does not clearly show is the watch.

The watch in question is a Rolex Cosmograph Daytona, reference 6239, with the contrasting "exotic" dial. Woodward bought it for him around the time of Winning, reportedly from Tiffany and Co., and had the caseback engraved DRIVE CAREFULLY ME, a line that followed Newman's near-fatal 1965 motorcycle accident. He wore it almost daily from 1969 to 1984. By the 1980s dealers had started calling that dial style a "Paul Newman," and in October 2017 the watch itself sold at Phillips in New York for 17.8 million dollars, a world record for a wristwatch at the time.

The legend, though, runs ahead of the frame. The watch is tied to Winning through the gift, through the film's promotion, and through archival footage of Newman racing his own Daytona, rather than through any documented appearance on Capua's wrist on screen. Accounts even disagree on when Woodward gave it to him, ranging from 1968 to 1972. The most famous watch-and-movie pairing in the hobby may be one where the movie never actually shows the watch.