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This virtually identical watch, which still has its
original dial, will be on display at the 2009
NAWCC National Convention in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Manufacture date, markings, and other important Fleming-Bond watch
configurations described in this BULLETIN article have been
confirmed by Rolex UK.
Last May 28 I was at the
Lilly Library in conjunction with Ian Fleming Centenary
commemorations. While there, I took time to pull from their archive an
original On Her Majesty’s Secret Service Uncorrected Proof, which
would have been printed shortly before that novel was first published on
April 1, 1963 — almost six months after the October 5, 1962, premier of
Dr. No starring Sean Connery. I found that Ian Fleming had not
only continued to make changes to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
well into spring 1963, but among those he’d made a key correction in
reference to the James Bond watch.
But there was no effort to reconcile a consistency with the movie-Bond
wristwatch. The singular “Oyster Perpetual” wording in On Her
Majesty’s Secret Service could have easily been changed to
“Submariner” at that late date. It wasn’t.
This was a period of unique challenges for Ian Fleming, intimately, as
the creative force behind 007. Litigation stemming from an earlier
attempt at a movie deal sought to wrest credit from him for various
successes of the
James Bond icon. A massive heart attack in 1961 mandated radical
changes to his active lifestyle.
The Spy Who Loved Me (1962) was an experimental departure from
the popular formula that Fleming had established for the book series,
and it was resoundingly panned by critics.
Then, with the Dr. No movie, the world of Tinsel Town got him
caught up in a measure of playacting choreographed to blur the lines
between his actual service with the Department of Naval Intelligence
during World War II and the fictional exploits of his fantasy secret
agent.
In my WatchTime article, I wrote that it was “hard to imagine
that Ian Fleming would have let the last detail of Bond’s Rolex model be
determined by someone else.” My research leads me to conclude that that
“someone” was three-time 007 film director Terence Young. In an
interview published in 1981, Young described the nature of his rivalry
with Fleming at that time over how the James Bond character would be
presented going forward.
I’m confident that the Bond creator held fast to key details of the
character as reminders that it would always be “Ian Fleming’s James Bond
007” (as, in fact, the lead to each new movie states even to this day).
In
You Only Live Twice (1964), Fleming made what I read as yet
another insider passage for which he is famous, this time, to
horologists. In defense of the post-World War II greatness of England,
James Bond gives only one specific: “…we still climb Everest….” Here
again is implication of Ian Fleming’s propensity to keep almost any
scrap of information he came across and to use it however he could in
his stories. Period Rolex documents connected his Explorer to the climb
he had Bond reference. I don’t think that is coincidence.
In my opinion, there is indeed one specific brand, model, and
configuration for James Bond’s first watch — just one. That’s what I’ve
written about here.
It’s hardly a surprise to prove that Ian Fleming first wore the original
James Bond watch (and I suspect that Sean Connery would be among those
most happy to agree). But the question for this BULLETIN article
was not so much “Where—?” but, rather, “How was it found?”
That answer required discussions with those who actually knew Ian
Fleming, professional examination of his Rolex, physical contact with
the author’s own James Bond writings, and a Geiger Counter. Even then,
my proposal draft to WatchTime was substantiated by some 168
footnotes before going forward — a field assignment quite worthy of
Agent 007 himself.
This is how I found the original James Bond watch.
Dell Deaton is an expert on Ian Fleming and James Bond,
creator-author of jamesbondwatches.com, and guest curator for the
“Bond Watches, James Bond Watches” exhibit, June 18, 2010, through April
30, 2011. |
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07/28/2010 08:22 AM |
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