Who is Michael Ovitz?

Michael Ovitz isn’t a guy that needs much introduction, his fame precedes him. In fact the 74 years old American businessman is known around the world for his career in the movie industry, initially as an agent for some of the most famous stars in Hollywood and later on as President of Disney.

Also known for his philanthropy and his extreme importance in the art collecting world, he has also affirmed himself as an outstanding watch collector.

The collection

As with all private collections it is extremely difficult to know the models and the number of pieces that make up the collection. The IWS team however has spotted many interesting pieces and many other have appeared at auction in recent years.

Let’s proceed with the overview of some of the watches of the most powerful person in Hollywood.

Rolex classics

The most frequently photographed timepieces all belong to the Swiss world famous maison, confirming its popularity even in Hollywood. Amongst the many pieces we have photographed on his wrist we can find many Daytonas. One of the most important is the Daytona Paul Newman pictured down here. (click here to learn about the vintage Daytona with our complete guide).

However, Michael Ovitz does not disdain more modern pieces as we can see in the picture below where he is portrayed while wearing a modern (in those days) Daytona.

In addition to this icons we can find an Explorer II with a white “polar” watch face, a classic gold Day-Date with a President bracelet and champagne dial and a GMT Master II with a black ceramic bezel, the first ever model to have a ceramic bezel.  

Pieces Unique by Patek Philippe: only the best

The focal point of his collection of course is: Patek Philippe. 

No serious collection is deemed as such with at least a couple pieces of the Maison, and it seems that Ovitz shares this opinion with me. Not only has he bought important pieces for his collection but he has become such a good customer that he even has the maison make some tailored pieces, at least a dozen, following his guidelines. 

He is in fact known to have changed the configuration of the dials, changing colors and often adding Breguet style numbers.

He is also known for adding onto the watches he requested a special monogram “MSO” (Michael Steven Ovitz) generally at 6 o’ clock.

This last particular detail makes the watch unique and desirable for all collectors as testified by the sales, more or less private, that have come to life. 

Amongst these we can mention a 5139G with an extraordinary blue dial and Clou de Paris decorations on the edges.

A 3940G with a salmon dial

A 3940R with a brown dial (instead of a white one) and a 5050J with Breguet numerals and a black dial.

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An outstanding 5004J with black dial, golden spherical hour indexes, a latin numeral at 12 o’ clock and a MSO monogram at 6 o’ clock.

Except for the dial, the rest of the watch follows the standards of any other “normal” 5004J.

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In the end, we also have a 5059G with black dial, breguet numerals and a red retrograde hand.

Final Remarks

The exclusivity and the prestige of Patek Philippe is something we all are aware with and even being able to purchase one of the models released to the public by the maison, we can only imagine the troubles (financial as well)  that Micheal Ovitz went through to commission such a great number of unique pieces. 

The configurations are without a doubt beautiful, with many other customers requesting similar if not identical configurations. This hasn’t been seen well by the initial client that has seen his creations expropriated from him. This is why he requested all future models to be bounded by an exclusivity on the design.

                                                                                                                         Author: Pietro Pilla

Translated by: Tommaso Metzger