Goodfellas (1990)

Goodfellas

Martin Scorsese's adaptation of Nicholas Pileggi's Wiseguy traces Henry Hill's three decades inside a New York crime crew, from apprentice to informant. Its watches follow that rise in status: Hill wears gold quartz throughout, more than one piece of it, and the Lufthansa money buys the single gold Rolex President that surfaces at Christmas 1978, while Jimmy Conway favors a vintage Hamilton dress watch. (IMDb)

Watches

Seiko SQ 7813-8019

Worn by Ray Liotta as Henry Hill. Through the paranoid "Sunday, May 11, 1980" sequence that closes the film, Henry wears a flat gold-tone watch with a round pale dial on a woven gold bracelet, worn against a curb-link gold ID bracelet. The frame resolves the case shape, the colour and the bracelet and nothing else: no dial text, no calendar window, no reference. The identification is therefore probable rather than confirmed, and the sources that make it do not show their working. Wrist Enthusiast in 2021 and WatchReel both name a Seiko SQ 7813-8019, neither says how the reference was read, and WatchReel's own specification block describes a 28 mm stainless case rather than the gold one on screen. BAMF Style, writing on this exact scene, describes the same watch closely as a flat gold piece with a round white dial on a gold bracelet and then asks its readers what it is; the 7813-8019 appears on that page only in a 2023 reader comment. The Seiko Guy documents 7813-8019 as a genuine reference, an analogue quartz on Seiko's calibre 7813, without publishing a dial or bracelet. Propstore's separately auctioned screen-worn prop is a different watch again, a gold Orion on a lizard strap, and its lot notes that three were worn during production. (Wrist Enthusiast; BAMF Style; WatchReel; The Seiko Guy) Hodinkee, crediting props to Robert Griffon Jr., reads the same watch with its own hedges: "the Seiko Quartz SQ (possibly the model 7813) with white dial and Seiko SQ branding near six o'clock", on the right wrist, on a gold bracelet different from the factory option, and says it is hard to tell whether the day-date is present. (Hodinkee)

© Warner Bros.

Orion gold-plated quartz dress watch

Worn by Ray Liotta as Henry Hill. The second of Henry's gold watches is a cushion-cased Orion quartz on a dark lizard strap, champagne dial, Roman numerals and a date window at three. It is the piece Propstore sold in 2022 with a letter of authenticity from prop master Robert J. Griffon, Jr., which places it on Hill when he pistol-whips Karen's neighbour and in the Bamboo Lounge scene where Tommy DeVito asks how, exactly, he is funny; the reference frame in the lot shows the rounded-square gold case and dark strap on Henry's wrist outside the neighbour's house. The lot also records that it was "one of only three worn during production," which is why the gold watch on the mesh bracelet elsewhere in the film is a different watch rather than a competing identification of this one. (Propstore) Hodinkee describes the same object, "a square gold timepiece with a champagne dial on a leather strap" worn through most of the first two acts, names no maker for it and asks its readers to identify it. (Hodinkee)

© Warner Bros.

Rolex Day-Date

Worn by Ray Liotta as Henry Hill. Henry wears a gold Rolex after the Lufthansa robbery. BAMF Style, cataloguing the December 1978 Christmas sequence, has him "limiting his conspicuous expenditures to a white Christmas tree, a gold Rolex, and a bundle of cash gifted to his wife," and describes what he wears at home that night as "a yellow gold Rolex Day-Date wristwatch with a champagne dial and gold 'President' link bracelet." Rolex Magazine, writing on Ray Liotta in 2022, independently names the same watch in the same scene. The frame carries the case, colour and bracelet and stops there: the fluted bezel and the day and date apertures that would fix a reference are not resolvable, so the appearance sits with the line rather than a reference. Montres de Luxe separately identifies the same gold Day-Date, noting it on Henry's right wrist. (BAMF Style; BAMF Style, thirty style moments; Rolex Magazine; Montres de Luxe) Hodinkee places the Day-Date in the same Christmas scene, on Henry's right wrist, and calls it "unmistakable with its fluted bezel and iconic President bracelet", reading as visible the bezel this note treats as unresolved. (Hodinkee)

© Warner Bros.

Hamilton tonneau dress watch

Worn by Robert De Niro as Jimmy Conway. BAMF Style identifies Jimmy's rectangular-cased watch as likely the Hamilton documented among De Niro's screen-worn inventory at the Harry Ransom Center: an "eighteen carat yellow-gold vintage watch [with] a black tonneau-style face, gold Arabic numerals." (BAMF Style)

© Warner Bros.

Bulova (unidentified model)

Worn by Robert De Niro as Jimmy Conway. BAMF Style identifies a second Jimmy Conway watch, worn through the film's 1980 windowpane-jacket scenes: "a two-toned Bulova... stainless steel-cased quartz watch [with] a gold-toned fixed bezel encircling the round silver-toned dial with its gold hands and hour indices, strapped to his left wrist on a silver-toned panther link bracelet with gold-toned ball accents," distinct from the earlier Hamilton tonneau watch above. (BAMF Style)

© Warner Bros.