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| Image: Ian Fleming's Rolex Explorer I watch, which the author used as the model for James Bond's watch in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. |
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Click here for complete *.pdf version of "Discovered: James Bond's Rolex," WatchTime (February 2009), by Dell Deaton |
Everything changes with On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, written in 1962.
Thirteen percent of all James Bond watch references are in this one novel, more than in any other Fleming thriller. He cited the Rolex brand in seven places. As Bond expert and author Kingsley Amis generally observed, Fleming wrote “with an energy that shows [when] he’s dealing with something personally important to him.”
What was that?
I’m convinced that it was the deal struck with Eon Productions in 1961
to make five James Bond movies. The first,
Dr. No, began filming in Jamaica during the early months of 1962
— the same time Ian Fleming was there, writing On Her Majesty’s
Secret Service. We know that cross-pollination resulted, because the
virtually unknown actress who played the female lead in Dr. No is
referred to as “Ursula Andress, the film star” in the novel On Her
Majesty’s Secret Service.
Sean Connery, as Bond in Dr. No, wore a Submariner. Whoever made
that happen, the only Fleming book then existing to specify a Rolex was
Live and Let Die. It’s hard to imagine that Ian Fleming would
have let the last detail of Bond’s Rolex model be determined by someone
else. Neither would he have forgotten the 1958 letter that first
recommended Rolex to him. As 007 followers know, it was another reader’s
letter, from gun expert Geoffrey Boothroyd, which persuaded Fleming to
have James Bond
give up his signature Beretta pistol in favor of a Walther PPK.
