Credited screenwriters · Dirty Harry (1971), Warner Bros. / The Malpaso Company
Harry Julian Fink and his wife Rita M. Fink (credited as R. M. Fink) wrote the original spec script — working title Dead Right — that became Dirty Harry; the AFI Catalog ↗ credits them with both the screenplay and the story, alongside Dean Riesner, who rewrote the script for Clint Eastwood and Don Siegel. The screen credit is shared three ways and quotle.info does not split it further: John Milius and Terrence Malick also worked on uncredited drafts ↗, and a widely repeated claim that Milius personally wrote the “Do I feel lucky?” speech is not supported by any source we could verify — in his own 1976 Film Comment interview Milius described his contribution as “a lot of guns” and Harry’s attitude, not this speech. What is certain is the author class: the line belongs to the writers, not to the character and not to the actor.