Richard Widmark wears a Hamilton Frogman

The Frogmen reached theaters in 1951 with an asset no rival studio could match: Twentieth Century-Fox had secured an exclusive guarantee of cooperation from the U.S. Navy, and Lloyd Bacon used it to put underwater demolition teams on screen in what stands as the first film about scuba diving. Richard Widmark plays Lieutenant Commander John Lawrence, the replacement commander who inherits a team still grieving its beloved skipper, Jack Cassidy, and has to earn the respect of men who do not want him. Dana Andrews and Gary Merrill fill out the unit. The Academy noticed the craft, nominating Norbert Brodine's black and white photography and Oscar Millard's story, though neither won.

The watches on the team's wrists were the real thing twice over. Hamilton had been building sealed dive watches for the Navy's Bureau of Ships since 1943, chrome-plated tool watches whose canteen-style screw-down crown, its protector chained to the case, kept water out before modern crown sealing existed. In 1951 Hamilton put its first mass-produced version on public sale under the name Frogman, and the film carried the watch to the screen the same year. The filmmakers chose it, by Hamilton's own telling, for historical accuracy: these were the watches the real demolition teams wore. Hamilton still lists the film as the second stop on its cinema timeline, between Shanghai Express in 1932 and Elvis Presley's Ventura in 1961.

Whether the Frogman sits on Widmark's own wrist in any given frame is more than the coverage spells out. Hamilton credits the watches to the characters of the film collectively, the unit rather than the man, and the poster art, all painted divers and knife fights, shows no dial. Lawrence commands the team the watches were made for, and that is as specific as the documentation gets. Decades later Hamilton revived the name for its Khaki Navy Frogman divers, whose locking crown still quotes the chained protector of the wartime original.