Rod Taylor wears a Rolex Submariner

The Liquidator (1965) belongs to the wave of Bond imitations that crested in the mid-sixties, and it has the best joke of the bunch. Rod Taylor plays Boysie Oakes, a wartime sergeant whom Major Mostyn (Trevor Howard) mistakes for a born assassin after Oakes accidentally kills two men. Twenty-one years later Mostyn recruits him into intelligence work as a sanctioned killer, and Oakes, who cannot stomach any of it, secretly hires a freelance contract killer named Griffin to do the dirty work while he enjoys the women and the expense account. Jill St. John plays Mostyn's secretary Iris, who turns out to be running the whole operation. Jack Cardiff, the celebrated cinematographer turned director, made it from John Gardner's 1964 novel, the first in a series MGM hoped would become a franchise.

The Rolex Submariner attributed to Taylor here is the right sort of watch for a fake superspy, which may be exactly the problem with the claim. The attribution circulated on a low-grade movie-watch list that no longer resolves, no watch publication has documented the placement, and the available frames keep Oakes's wrists under his suit cuffs. The Submariner was the watch on Sean Connery's Bond in this same period, which makes it the obvious guess for any Bond imitation. No one has yet produced a frame that settles it.