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I will never forget the wrenching sobs I let out on a summer night at our mountain cottage, alone in front of the television while the rest of the family slept like logs. I must have been nine or ten, still in primary school. It was late, one or two after midnight, and the end credits had just rolled on a film that branded itself on my memory. It was The Great Gatsby, from F. Scott Fitzgerald, and it had aired on state television – the only channel we could get that high up in the mountains. A period piece, beautiful sets, beautiful people, and a love story with a bleak, tragic ending. The protagonist’s death, so utterly unexpected and so unfair, left me shaken to the core. I should note that I am not someone who usually cries during films. But it was so deftly directed, with such fine performances, that I felt as if I were living it myself. Of course, it was also the innocence of childhood. That was the first time I saw Robert Redford act, and he impressed me so much that from then on, I didn’t miss a single one of his movies. Which to single out? The Sting, Three Days of the Condor, All the President’s Men, Barefoot in the Park, The Way We Were, The Natural, Out of Africa, Sneakers, Indecent Proposal, The Horse Whisperer, Spy Game, The Last Castle, those are certainly among my favorites. And I found his directing work outstanding as well, especially the ones with a political edge: Ordinary People, A River Runs Through It, Lions for Lambs, The Conspirator, The Company You Keep… Robert Redford won two Academy Awards: the first in 1980 for directing Ordinary People, and the second in 2002 for his lifetime contribution to cinema. Perhaps he deserved even more…
Since our topic here is watches, as I bid farewell to Hollywood’s “handsome blond,” I went back through Redford’s filmography and what has been written over time about the watches he wore in the movies he headlined. With very few exceptions – mainly period pieces that required, say, pocket watches, as in The Great Gatsby, or something fancier, like the delicate yellow-gold, ultra-slim pieces we see on his wrist in Havana, Barefoot in the Park, and The Way We Were – Robert Redford preferred to wear his own watches on camera. Most of them were rugged dive tools, in steel and generously sized on the wrist.
The model most closely associated with the actor, and the one we’ve seen him wear in quite a few of his films, was a steel Rolex Submariner ref. 1680, the so-called “Red Sub,” or “Single Red”, because the word Submariner appears in red on its black dial.
Where did we see it? First of all, in All the President’s Men, from 1976, based on the book by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who uncovered the Watergate scandal that led to President Nixon’s downfall.
Woodward and Bernstein were portrayed by Redford and Dustin Hoffman, respectively. In several scenes you can spot the Rolex Submariner 1680, which belonged to Redford himself. We had already seen the same watch front and center on his wrist in the 1972 political comedy-thriller The Candidate, and later in The Electric Horseman in 1979.
A second watch that belonged to Redford was the Doxa SUB 300T Sharkhunter diver, which he wore in Sydney Pollack’s 1975 espionage thriller Three Days of the Condor. He played a CIA researcher who uncovers a conspiracy inside the agency, finds his colleagues dead, and struggles to survive mortal danger.
That particular Doxa – incidentally reissued a few years back in various versions – was, again, steel, and the actor wore it on a black bund strap with round perforations. This choice is not at all common for dive watches, yet it proved extremely successful for the persona Redford created in the film.
We first saw it on his wrist in 2001, in Spy Game. It was the famed spy thriller that brought together the two most handsome blonds in global cinema: Robert Redford and Brad Pitt. Here Redford is older, playing the mentor of the younger operative (Pitt), and on his wrist is a Victorinox Swiss Army Officer’s 1884.
It is steel as well, but unlike the previous pieces it is more refined and more classically minded. We also see Redford wearing this particular watch everywhere in real life, and always on his right wrist – as with all his watches – since he was left-handed. And one more detail: in life and in most of his films you’ll notice he never parts with a silver ring engraved with symbols. As he himself revealed, it was a gift from the Hopi tribe, and he had worn it since 1966.
In the most recent phase of his career, in 2013, seventy-seven-year-old Robert Redford starred in the survival drama All Is Lost. He plays an experienced sailor whose boat collides with a shipping container floating at sea and begins to sink. The hero finds himself alone in the middle of the ocean and fights to survive, battling waves, hunger, and exhaustion. On Redford’s wrist you can clearly see, in many scenes, an affordable Seiko dive watch, his only companion in this harrowing ordeal.
It is the SKX009 “Pepsi” Diver, so nicknamed for its distinctive two-tone red-and-blue bezel, in the colors of the famous soft drink. The watch was sold on a steel bracelet and on rubber, but Redford chose to pair it with a NATO-style fabric strap, blue, sun-bleached and salt-washed, just as it would be for a genuine old sea-dog.
Sadly, Robert Redford is no longer with us. The famed actor, director, producer, and activist is one of those people who left an indelible mark on the history of cinema and beyond. And certainly not only because he was so handsome. His undeniable beauty helped a great deal, especially in his early steps. Tall, lean, with strawberry-blond hair from his Irish roots, a dazzling, charming smile, and clear blue eyes, he had the whole “package” to succeed in Hollywood. But it was his great talent, the natural, intuitive way he lit up the camera, his grounded and always discreet temperament, his passion for Nature and the environment, his respect for people, and the care he showed to young actors, just a few of the traits that made him so special. Rest in peace.
