Robert Redford wears an unidentified watch

In 1971, John Dortmunder walks out of prison and his brother-in-law Andy Kelp, played by George Segal, is waiting with the next job: a client named Dr. Amusa wants a diamond that sits in the Brooklyn Museum. Peter Yates directed, William Goldman wrote the script from Donald Westlake's 1970 comic novel, and the engine of the picture is that the heist keeps succeeding and then coming undone. Allan Greenberg, the explosives man played by Paul Sand, swallows the stone during the museum job; it resurfaces in a police station, which the crew raids by helicopter; it finishes its run in a bank safe deposit box. Ron Leibman drives. Zero Mostel plays Greenberg's father, a lawyer.

Dortmunder's wristwatch gets its own scene. At the police station, a radio crackling in the background, a man the credits call Happy Hippie admires it: gee, that is a nice watch, he would really like that watch. Dortmunder tells him to keep going to church and maybe God will reward him. The hippie corrects him. He did not say he would like a watch like that. He said he would like that watch. A strap snaps open, and the watch changes hands.

In the helicopter, a peaked cap on his head and his forearms draped over the controls, Dortmunder wears the watch in plain view: a small round case on a wide black leather cuff, a bund strap with a riveted band, the dial turned away from the camera. Redford owned a steel Rolex Submariner in those years and wore it in other pictures, which makes the Submariner the easy guess here. The frame argues against it: the strap is leather, not steel, and nothing visible reads Submariner. No watch publication or forum has ever put a name on what Dortmunder is wearing.