Hollywood in Your Pocket, and Eternity Too

«Cut», calls the director. Film scenes are cut to the exact second. Director Otis Turner could rely on his fine chronograph, a gift in 1914 from Carl Laemmle, the top boss of Universal Studios: a chronograph by Jules Jürgensen with split-seconds hand. In 1914, the director shot three films for Universal. They must have been successful — otherwise there would hardly have been such a costly gift. Otis Turner was a productive director: in just ten years, from 1908 until his death in 1918, he shot 130 films. He must always have treated his watch with care — it presents itself in excellent condition. Carl Laemmle was among the most powerful and successful film bosses in the USA, fittingly with his slogan: «I'm the Moving Picture Man».

A watch with a perpetual calendar would hardly have come into question as a present from Laemmle — no director was allowed to take too much time over his work. Such a watch was better suited to the tsar's court, where one believed in lasting forever. Our Patek Philippe with perpetual calendar was delivered to Russia by the Swedish dealer Ericsson, fittingly equipped with a Cyrillic calendar. August Ericsson was purveyor to the court in St. Petersburg from 1865 to 1915 and supplied only watches from the finest makers. The Patek Philippe with perpetual calendar and minute repeater was no everyday business for him either; for such a costly watch there was only a limited circle of buyers. Ericsson will have found it in the Russian high nobility, if not in the tsar's family itself.

With Anna Karenina, Universal also released a film from the tsarist era in 2012. But that is another story.

From the highlight brochures of Auktionshaus Zofingen.