Did you know Clint Eastwood once worked as a logger before landing breakout role in Hollywood?

Did you know Clint Eastwood once worked as a logger before landing breakout role in Hollywood?

In 1949, Clint Eastwood left Oakland Technical High School to take up a risky outdoor job. He became a logger at the Weyerhaeuser Company Mills, where his father also worked. Eastwood relocated to Springfield, Oregon, where he was paid $1.80 an hour, a substantial wage at that time, for his work in tree felling.

Eastwood shared his lumberjack experiences in the 1992 biography "Clint Eastwood: Sexual Cowboy" by Douglas Thompson. He recounted a particularly dangerous moment while on the job:

“I heard a shout and looked up and saw the crane driver and I hadn’t quite got it organized,” Eastwood said. “A nasty load of giant logs hung suspended over my head. I don’t think I’ve reacted faster in my life. Yet even as I started to run, down came the logs. Any one of them could have crushed the life out of me. I just barely jumped clear- as the logs hit the ground they jammed against the crane, which was a lucky break for me.”

Clint Eastwood said he loved the mountain setting of his job. But you really needed to know what you were doing. Or else.

“The money was good in the logging business and so was the food,” Eastwood said. “The guys you met there were like wild characters out of a novel. It was pretty hard living but working outdoors in this fabulous country- rugged mountains, tall pine and fir forests – made it worthwhile. I never stayed long enough to work up into one of the really skilled jobs: if a man doesn’t know what he’s doing he can really pay for it.

“Some of the Douglas firs grew 250 to 300 feet tall,” Eastwood continued. “And a man who goes up to the top of one of those to lop off the high branches has to be experienced. Log – rolling – that’s riding the logs in mid-river – is another job where you either know what you’re doing or you don’t live long enough to have grandchildren. I earned good money felling trees.”

Clint Eastwood then described how thick the trees were. It definitely was a two-man job.

“I’d pick where I wanted a tree to fall,” Eastwood said. “Take my axe and cut a ‘V’ so it would fall in that direction. Then another man and myself would work a two-man double saw. It took two of us because some of these trees were six feet in diameter. Some of the time was spent in the sawmill which was better pay but I preferred being outdoors.”