The whole watch has a military feel to it, with the solid lugs, plain dial, contract-style case with crude Zenith stamping as if it was designed to be supplied by the thousands, and reasonably high quality movement, but i can't figure out what that BEM where the retailer's name should be
I can't really tell. Is there a store in Moscow called GEM? Or does the cyrillic for GUM look like GEM ?
All of the differences in the BEM from the ZENITH directly above it suggest to me that it did not leave the factory with it printed that way. It's darker/bold, the kerning is ever-so-slightly off to the left, the M appears larger. My guess is that an owner somewhere along the way had his initials added to the dial by a well-meaning but less-skilled watchmaker. But who knows.
I think if it was cyrillic (that was my original thought), then the Zenith would be in cyrillic also. Z-E-N-I-T-H is definitely not cyrillic.
No. GUM in cyrillic is ГУМ. BEM is added after the printing of Zenith. So I wouldn't expect Zenith to be written in the county language of BEM.
Interesting idea but not one I'd immediately spring to, that some owner took, apparently, great pains to deface his own dial with his name or initials for some reason! Or that he got some repairer to do this for him in what others have described here as such a ham-fisted manner! Where, in over a half century of collecting I have never either seen or heard of anyone defacing their own watch in such a difficult, complex and intricate a manner. Especially where there is just such a position for someone to do exactly this, - on the back! Without pulling the watch apart. Where people can and often do do exactly this with their name, initials, expressions of love, good luck etc etc etc. As for doing this on one's own dial, if you check, I think you'll find that (for example) Cuervo Y Sobrinos might well look like but wasn't some owner's name, it was what I alluded to in OP, - a retailer! Paul Buhre, written in english or cyrillic still isnt the owner's name!
Many 1940s watches are marked with the name of a jeweler that sold the watch. Called “double signature” a well known example found across brands are watches marked “Turler” in addition to the brand. I’ve seen Longines watches marked “Ahrens”, “Harrods”, “Eric Larsson” (Sweden), even Eberhard- some names are well known, some totally obscure. This is really not unusual.
Yes, all that is a bit obvious to anyone who has collected watches for longer than about ten minutes, but thank you for that logo! Now I will have to try to figure out who the BEM was. Plus admittedly there was a bloke called Chronometro Gondolo who used to scrawl his name all over so many watches that eventually I suppose people started calling stop watches chronos for short? But I didnt know James Garner was so insecure? (or needed to remind himself of his name whenever he looked at his watch) (Or Heuer North America did) Anyway, now I have a new task for myself: Go out and search for a Paul Newman Rolex with his name scrawled all over the dial
And now that we know better I suppose I'll have to re-write the Zenith Wiki page to reflect Baume et Mercier possibly being on this evidence the same company?
It's a bit of a long shot, but on the assumption that BEM refers to a local Zenith retailer/agent/jeweler, you might look for 1940s period advertising, catalogs, or brochures. Sometimes those documents list the brand's regional or in-country retailers. Maybe you'll find one with those initials.