Did You Know?

The opening sniper scenes were shot from atop San Francisco's Bank of America Building located at 555 California Street. The sniper's target is a girl swimming in the pool on the roof of the Holiday Inn in Chinatown, a few blocks north at 750 Kearny Street.

Andrew Robinson who played Scorpio, claims to have ad-libbed the line "Hubba, hubba, hubba, pig bastard" while taunting Harry on the phone.

Dirty Harry's gun is supposedly a Smith & Wesson Model 29 revolver, chambered for a .44 Magnum cartridge. In the film, the gun is shown as being capable of sending assailants flying through the air, even when shot from a distance, however, in reality the gun does not produce such dramatic results. Additionally, the .44 Magnum round is not considered to be a practical caliber for urban police force use due to recoil (which makes target re-acquisition difficult) and over-penetration issues, which greatly increases the likelihood of the bullet going through its target and injuring bystanders. The actual gun used on set by Clint Eastwood was in fact a Smith & Wesson Model 29. It is a common misconception that a Model 29 could not be located and a Model 57, chambered in .41 Magnum, was used instead. Clint Eastwood contacted Bob Sauer, representative for Smith and Wesson, to acquire the pistol. The Model 29 had been out of production for several years at the time, but a number of pistols were assembled from parts at the factory and provided to the crew. Eastwood took one to a firing range to familiarize himself with the Model 29.

In real life, Andrew Robinson is a pacifist who despises guns. In the early days of principal photography, Robinson would flinch violently every time he fired. Director Don Siegel was forced to shut down production for a time and sent Robinson to a school to learn to fire a gun convincingly. However, he still blinks noticeably when he shoots. Robinson was also squeamish about filming the scene where he verbally and physically abuses several schoolchildren, and the scene where he racially insults the man he pays to beat him up (Raymond Johnson).

After Clint Eastwood and Don Siegel came on board the project, they hired writer Dean Riesner to work on the script. In his first rewrite, the bank robbery scene ends with Harry not pointing the gun at the robber, but placing it against his own temple. He pulls the trigger, laughs and then walks away. Eastwood and Siegel both felt this was too extreme, even for Harry Callahan.

Albert Popwell appeared in every "Dirty Harry" film except The Dead Pool playing a different character in each movie.

All the outdoor scenes were actually filmed in San Francisco except for the bank robbery which Dirty Harry foils, when he first utters his immortal phrase, "'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?" This scene was shot on a set.

The original title was "Dead Right".

Clint Eastwood performed all his own stunts, including the stunt where he jumps onto the roof of the hijacked school bus from a bridge. His face is clearly visible throughout the shot.

When Harry finally meets Scorpio in Mount Davidson Park, Scorpio orders him to show his gun with his left hand. Harry pulls it from his holster and Scorpio ad-libs the line, "My, that's a big one!" This line caused the crew to crack up and the scene had to be re-shot, but the line stayed

A close-up shot was planned for Debralee Scott's appearance, in which she played the nude corpse of Ann Mary Deacon. She felt so cold in the dawn chill that she shivered uncontrollably. After several failed takes, her scene was filmed as a long shot.

According to the original script, the phrase that Dirty Harry quotes during both the bank robbery and his final confrontation with Scorpio was not the actual quote for the movie, the actual quote in the script was, "Well? Was it five or was it six? Regulations say five...hammer down on an empty...only not all of us go by the book. What you have to do is think about it. I mean, this is a .44 Magnum and it'll turn your head into hash. Now, do you think I fired five or six? And if five, do I keep a live one under the hammer? It's all up to you. Are you feeling lucky, punk?"

Josef Sommer's first film.

Robert Mitchum, John Wayne, Steve McQueen and Burt Lancaster all claimed to have turned the film down.

'Dirty Harry' is the slang term for a photographer (either shooting paparazzi and/or modeling shoots) with a single lens reflex (SLR) camera. The slang term for an SLR camera is a .44 Magnum.

The role of Harry Callahan was originally written for John Wayne. The writers, husband and wife team Harry Julian Fink and Rita M. Fink, had just finished working with Wayne on Big Jake and when they were trying to sell their script, they used him as an example of how they envisioned the character. Wayne however said he wasn't interested in the role as he felt the violence in the script was unjustified and glorified. Eventually, the Finks sold their script to Universal, who were thinking of using it as a Clint Eastwood vehicle, but they never followed up on initial plans, and they let the rights to the script run out.

Insp. Harry Callahan's badge number is 2211. His radio ID is 71.

Banned in Finland for over a year.

One of the reasons why Don Siegel cast Andrew Robinson as Scorpio was because he wanted someone "with a face like a choirboy".

Dirty Harry helped popularize the Smith & Wesson Model 29 .44 Magnum revolver which experienced an upswing in sales following the film's release.

Uncredited screenwriter John Milius wrote his draft of the film inspired by Akira Kurosawa's studies in lone-gun detectives, while director Don Siegel tackled the material from the viewpoint of bigotry.

The idea of a car chase was dropped as another cop thriller set in San Francisco - Bullitt - had already set the bar for that.

The original draft of the script by Harry Julian Fink and Rita M. Fink was set in New York City. When Clint Eastwood and Don Siegel became involved in the project, they initially planned to relocate the film to Seattle, Washington before ultimately deciding on San Francisco.

When Clint Eastwood approached Don Siegel to offer him the directing job, Eastwood gave Siegel four drafts of the script, one of which was written by Terrence Malick. In Malick's script, he had altered Scorpio from being a mindless psychopath killing only because he likes it, to being a vigilante who killed wealthy criminals who had escaped justice. Siegel didn't like Malick's script, but Eastwood did, and Malick's ideas formed the basis for the sequel, Magnum Force.

This film makes references to the then recent criminal court trials of Escobedo v. Illinois and Miranda v. Arizona. Escobedo v Illinois was a 1964 case which ruled that any statements made by a suspect without the presence of legal counsel were inadmissible as evidence. Miranda v Arizona was a 1966 case which ruled that a suspect had to be informed of his rights prior to interrogation. If he was not informed of his rights, the subsequent interrogation was deemed null and void.

Harry drives a 1968 Ford Galaxie 500.

The gun Scorpio steals from the liquor store owner is a 9mm Walther P38. During his rooftop shootout, he uses a German MP40 sub-machine gun. The sniper rifle he uses is a 7.7mm Japanese Arisaka Type 02 Paratrooper Takedown rifle (rechambered in .30-06 Springfield) fitted with a suppressor. This particular rifle was sporterized; all of the Scorpio Killer's weapons were WWII-era infantry weapons.

In a 2009 poll for MTV News, the character of Harry Callahan was voted the "Greatest Movie Badass of All-Time." Dirty Harry beat other movie icons like Rambo, Ellen Ripley and John McClane to the top spot.

The first of five movies starring Clint Eastwood as Inspector "Dirty" Harry Callahan.

The 44 Magnum used in the film is now owned by Prop Master and weapons specialist Bill Davis who bought it off the production company years before the film became popular. The revolver is still in use as part of his catalog.

Kezar Stadium, the scene in which Callahan shoots Scorpio, is the former home of the NFL's San Francisco 49ers, and has since been remodeled as a state park, with the playing surface still intact.

For the iconic final shot when Dirty Harry tosses away his badge, Don Siegel was dismayed to discover that they had only brought one badge to the location shoot, so Eastwood had to throw it perfectly in just one take.