It's an old phrase for "giving" someone an inexpensive item for getting or doing something right.

Is that phrase really disappearing? Am I getting old?

But yes, the 1929 film The Woman in the Moon is the right answer. The countdown was added to add dramatic tension to the launch.

Here are some other tidbits from IMDB:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0019901/trivia

This film shows the first countdown to launch of a rocket. Not just the first one in a movie, but the first ever: it was invented as a dramatic device for the movie. Also depicted for the first time are the use of liquid rocket fuel, a rocket with two stages, and zero gravity in space.

When the Nazis began working on war rockets, they decided the movie's rockets were too close to the truth. To preserve secrecy, they had the models destroyed and the film withdrawn from release.

German rocket scientist Hermann Oberth was hired by the studio to create a flying model of the Friede (the rocket in the movie) to launch from northern Germany on the day of the release as a publicity stunt. However, Oberth pulled out of the deal because the rocket was not working, and undue pressure from the director was causing too many frayed nerves.

More information here:

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/oberth.htm