Sean Connery wears a Rolex Submariner

The most famous Rolex Submariner in cinema history was borrowed, not bought. When the production arrived for the first day of Dr. No (1962) without a watch for Sean Connery, someone on set simply handed over a personal ref. 6538, and Bond's Rolex era began by accident. Whose watch it actually was has never been settled: the most-repeated account credits producer Cubby Broccoli, while other tellings point to director Terence Young or a Royal Navy diver attached to the crew, and the original watch's whereabouts are unknown today. Young shot the first Bond film on a shoestring by franchise standards, in Jamaica with Ursula Andress and Joseph Wiseman. Ian Fleming had established Bond as a Rolex wearer in the novels, and this Submariner made the literary detail real.

The ref. 6538 is the "Big Crown" variant, produced between 1956 and 1959. The case measures 38mm with an oversized 8mm winding crown and no crown guards, a bidirectional aluminum bezel, and a gloss black dial. Connery wore it on a leather strap rather than the steel Oyster bracelet. At 38mm, the Submariner was a large watch for 1962 but looks almost modest by today's standards. The watch appears in the action and outdoor scenes while a smaller Gruen Precision dress watch handled the casino and hotel sequences.

This particular 6538 is where the Bond and Rolex association began. Nobody on the production thought they were minting an icon; they were borrowing a watch because the budget could not spare the money to buy one. In 1962 the Submariner was still a working diver's tool only a few years into its life, not the status object it would later become, and Connery wears it the way a naval intelligence officer would, as serviceable equipment. That understatement is exactly what made it stick.