Clint Eastwood – Information

Cast: Clint Eastwood, Harry Guardino, Reni Santoni, John Vernon, Andrew Robinson, John Larch and John Mitchum

Director: Don Siegel

Writers: Harry Julian Fink and Rita M. Fink

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A serial killer who calls himself “Scorpio” murders a young woman in a San Francisco high-rise rooftop swimming pool. The spent shell casing which was used in that murder is later found on the roof by Inspector Harry Callahan it’s accompanied by a ransom message from the Scorpio Killer, promising more deaths if the city does not pay him $100,000.

The chief of police, along with the Mayor decides to assigns Harry to the case and arranges for extra support. At a local café while he is waiting for his lunch, Harry notices a robbery is taking place and tells the cafe owner to call the police and report an armed robbery in progress.

While waiting for reinforcements, the robbers emerge from the bank, shooting wildly into the bank, forcing Harry to act. He confronts a robber in the street, who fires at him. Harry returns fire, sending the robber to the ground. Another robber makes it into the getaway car, which the driver aims at Harry as he pulls away. Harry fires at the car, causing the driver to lose control and crash into a fire hydrant.

Harry turns back to the robber he shot earlier, approaches the wounded man, and utters his famous line: “I know what you’re thinking- “Did he fire six shots or only five?” Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I’ve kind of lost track myself. But, being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya, punk? ”The next day, Callahan is assigned a newcomer partner named Chico Gonzalez. His new Partner is always getting injured while working and it is annoying Harry, but his Chief gives Harry no other option.

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Trivia provided by The Internet Movie Database:

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• Audie Murphy was first approached to play the Scorpio Killer, but he died in a plane crash on 28 May 1971 before his decision on the offer could be made.
• After Harry has foiled the bank robbery at the beginning of the film, he strides over to the one surviving robber. In doing so, he walks in front of a theatre which is showing Play Misty for Me (1971), which Eastwood directed and starred in.
• Opening sniper scenes shot from atop San Francisco’s Bank of America Building on 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 on Kearny Street.
• The final scene where Harry throws his badge in the river is homage to a similar scene from High Noon (1952).
• Andrew Robinson (Scorpio) had to get an unlisted phone number, as he received a death threat.
• Andrew Robinson who played Scorpio, claims to have ad-libbed the line “Hubba, hubba, hubba, pig bastard” while taunting Harry on the phone.
• Director Don Siegel pedestrian walking past Harry’s car when he and Chico return to police headquarters.
• The title role was originally intended for Frank Sinatra who had to pull out because of a hand injury. The script then passed to Paul Newman, who also turned it down but said it would be a perfect vehicle for Clint Eastwood.
• Body count: 7 (Four kills by Scorpio, three by Harry).
• Although Harry was supposed to use a SandW Model 29 .44 Mag, the actual gun used was the Model 57 in .41 Magnum.
• It is widely accepted that this movie was loosely based on the events surrounding the Zodiac Killer who was actively killing people in San Francisco at the time.
• Andrew Robinson, was actually a committed pacifist, and so terrified of guns that every time he had to fire one in the film, he would squeeze his eyes shut and flinch violently. Director Don Siegel had to shut down production for almost a week and hired a firearms expert to work with Robinson continuously until he was realistically able to fire a gun.
• When director Don Siegel fell ill during the shoot, Clint Eastwood took over the helm and directed two scenes: Harry’s late night rescue of a would-be suicide jumper and Harry’s homosexual encounter in San Francisco’s Mt. Davidson Park.
• In an earlier version of the script, when the fallen bank robber calls Harry’s bluff as to the “six shots or only five” question, Harry puts the gun to his own head.
• The original setting was supposed to be Seattle, Washington; however, Clint Eastwood and director Don Siegel chose San Francisco as the ideal location.
• The Hutchinson Co. quarry where the final shootout takes place was located just south of the Larkspur exit of highway 101. It was demolished in the mid 1980s.
• Albert Popwell appeared in every “Dirty Harry” film except The Dead Pool (1988) playing a different character in each movie.
• The bridge Callahan jumps off landing on the roof of a schoolbus (in Larkspur, California) was torn down in August 2003 after being damaged by a truck two months earlier.
• 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 you feel lucky?” This scene was shot on a set.
• The first choice for director was between Irvin Kershner and Sydney Pollack. Kershner ended up getting the job, only to be let go after Frank Sinatra declined the role of Harry Callahan.
• The original title was “Dead Right”.
• When Callahan (Clint Eastwood) is being run all over town by Scorpio, he passes a wall which bears the graffiti “Kyle”, the name of Eastwood’s son, Kyle Eastwood.
• Clint Eastwood performed all his own stunts, the most dangerous of which, was the jump from the bridge onto the roof of the moving hijacked school bus.
• A police department in the Philippines ordered a print of the movie for use as a training film.
• 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.
• Andrew Robinson was cast at the behest of Clint Eastwood who had seen him in a Broadway production of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “The Idiot”. Eastwood then convinced director Don Siegel that Robinson had the right unnerving characteristics to make an effective Scorpio.
• Kezar Stadium, the scene in which Callahan shoots Scorpio, is the former home of the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers, and is currently been remodeled as a state park, with the playing surface still intact.
• 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.
• Writer John Milius made a major contribution to the film (as well as Dirty Harry’s mystique). He wrote the lines Harry quotes to punks about “Did he fire six shots or five?” and the immortal “Do you feel lucky, punk?”
• 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?”
• The movie’s line “You’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?” was voted as the #51 movie quote by the American Film Institute (out of 100).
• In the final scene, Clint Eastwood really did throw his badge into the quarry pond. The SFPD issued another badge with the same number (2211) to replace it.
• Josef Sommer’s first film.
• Scorpio’s real name is never revealed throughout the entire movie, and in the ending credits he is simply listed as “killer”. However after the film’s release, a novelization gave his real name as Charles Davis.
• Robert Mitchum, John Wayne, Steve McQueen and Burt Lancaster all claimed to have turned the film down.
• Burt Lancaster turned down the lead role because he strongly disagreed with the violent, right-wing morals of the story.
• ‘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 movie’s most famous line is often misquoted. A lot of people mistakenly quote the line as “Do you feel lucky, punk?“ while the actual line is “You’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?”
• John Wayne allegedly turned down Dirty Harry (1971) because he felt the role of Harry Callahan was too far removed from his screen image. When he saw the movie he realized it wasn’t so different from the roles he had traditionally played, and made two cop dramas of his own, McQ (1974) and Brannigan (1975).
• Clint Eastwood objected to the end of the film when Harry throws his badge away after killing the Scorpio Killer, arguing with director Don Siegel that Harry knew that being a policeman was the only work for which he was suited. Siegel eventually convinced Eastwood that Harry threw his badge away as a symbol that he had lost faith in the justice system.
• The sniper calls himself „Scorpio” which is the Zodiac sign for people born between October 24th and November 22nd. November 22nd 1963 is the date that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by a sniper in Dallas, Texas, a killing that the Clint Eastwood character in In the Line of Fire (1993) would be directly involved in.
• Insp. Harry Callahan’s badge number is 2211.
• In the school bus, Scorpio and the children sing two popular children’s songs, ‘Old MacDonald Had a Farm’ and ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat’.

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