The Story of the Hamilton Khaki Field ‘Murph’

The Hamilton ‘Murph’ worn in Interstellar / Credit: Hodinkee — The Hamilton ‘Murph’ worn in *Interstellar* / Credit: Hodinkee

Hamilton has a long and storied history in movies. By the brand’s own estimation, Hamilton watches have appeared in over 500 films, beginning at least as early as the 1930s, and averaging about 15 to 20 TV and film appearances each year. You can spot them in stylish period pieces like Mad Men and The Talented Mr. Ripley, in action blockbusters like Amazon’s Jack Ryan or the most recent Die Hard outing, as well as in sci-fi hits like The Martian or Independence Day.

What’s more, these watches aren’t always the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it timepieces you typically glimpse on screen. Sometimes they’ll be central to the film’s plot. Take, for instance, Hamilton’s silver screen debut in the 1932 thriller Shanghai Express. In it, Marlene Dietrich realises the feelings of a former beau when she discovers that he still keeps a picture of her in his Flintridge wristwatch. Or think of any of the Men in Black films, where the Hamilton Ventura is an important bit of costuming for the titular characters, nearly as essential to their look as the signature black suits and sunglasses. At one point in the series, a Ventura even becomes an object of worship for a colony of tiny aliens.

There’s maybe no film, however, where a Hamilton is more pivotal to the plot than in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014). In it — SPOILER ALERT — former NASA pilot Joseph Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) must leave behind a dying earth in search of a new, habitable planet. Before he goes, he gives his daughter Murph his watch. Later, through the magic of the film’s time travelling machinations, the watch is used by Cooper to convey a vital piece of information to his daughter. His message is spelt out in morse code by the watch’s second hand and it contains the data needed to save earth’s population. Once Murph manages to decipher this horological code, she shouts, “Eureka!” in triumph.

If you need a refresher on the relevant scene, you can watch it here.

Interstellar’s prop master, Ritchie Kremer — whose credits include several Coen Brothers titles, Being John Malkovich, and HBO’s Westworld — settled on Hamilton after careful consideration. For this vital prop, he picked a 42mm field watch with a stainless steel casing, a black face, and a matching leather strap. Hamilton’s sweet spot in the market is the $495 to $995 range, so its no-nonsense, Midwestern appeal seemed to Kremer to be the right fit for McConaughey’s character, a former NASA pilot turned farmer.

The Hamilton Khaki Field ‘Murph’ / Credit: Hodinkee

The turnaround on filmmaking collaborations can be tight, and Interstellar was no exception. Hamilton had just three weeks to develop the watch based on the production team’s specifications. Not only did they need to recreate the desired aesthetic, they also had to make a watch that could convey the morse code called for in the script. Despite the challenges, Hamilton delivered in a big way.

The on-screen watch proved so popular that the brand brought out the Khaki Field Murph (usually just called the ‘Murph’) five years after the release of the film, apparently after many requests to do so by ardent Interstellar fans. The watch is still widely available, though there was also a more limited run featuring Interstellar-themed boxes made by Nolan’s regular production designer Nathan Crowley.

The Murph looks identical to the Hamilton watch in the film, except for one detail. If you look carefully, you’ll find a message inscribed on the second hand in morse code that spells out a single word: EUREKA!

By: Theo Coetzer

You can find more of Theo’s writing over at Habilitate, a menswear blog dedicated to finding the stories your wardrobe has to tell.