Tribute to a good man, Ed Hofmann

While sitting at Ed Hofmann’s funeral last Wednesday, I couldn’t help but think of how rapidly our community is losing so many of our old-timers and how much history is being lost along with them. Ed was a treasure; he knew so much and was always happy to share.

The next day I went hiking on Miller Mesa and recalled the fact that the movie, “Tribute to a Bad Man” was filmed there in the mid-1950s. Ed Hofmann was among the Montrose men who took the crew around the area, looking for the perfect location which just happened to be a spectacular green meadow above Ridgway on Miller Mesa. The construction crew got started right away building the ranch house, cook house, corrals and fences, which cost thousands of dollars.

MGM offered to pay for restoration of the original 1880s Circle Route stagecoach that was housed at the Montrose County Fairgrounds in order to use it in the movie. It’s the stagecoach you now see at the Montrose County Historical Museum.

The movie was a western, set in the 1870s, produced by Sam Zimbalist of MGM and directed by Robert Wise. It was about a dominant rancher, Jeremy Rodock, who trained and broke horses for Wells Fargo. Spencer Tracy was to play the part of Rodock, with Robert Francis as his co-star and Irene Papas as the leading lady.

Of course many horses were needed and were sought locally. Our family had several at the time and I remember herding our horses into the stock yards in Olathe where they were taken by freight train to Ridgway.

Filming was scheduled to begin in June, but Tracy did not show. The cast and other crew members had arrived, so Wise began to shoot all the scenes he could without Tracy, many involving Francis and Papas.

When Tracy arrived five days later, he went to the site, said it was great, ate a cheese sandwich, then returned to the Lazy IG Motel in Montrose to take a nap. He actually checked out of the motel and disappeared again, leaving no message. The crew continued filming any and all scenes that they possibly could without Tracy, costing the studio approximately $30,000 a day.

Eight days later Tracy showed up, but his heart was not in it. He complained of the altitude, wouldn’t take orders from the director and in general was obstinate and insubordinate. After a call from Wise to Zimbalist, the decision was made to replace Tracy, an action almost unheard of with a superstar of Tracy’s magnitude.

The first choice to replace Tracy was Clark Gable, but since he was not available, James Cagney agreed to do the film. Cagney was finishing another production and during the wait, young Francis decided to take flying lessons. He was tragically killed in a crash of his trainer plane. The movie had to be almost entirely refilmed, using Don Dubbins as a replacement for Francis.

Much of this information came from a relative of Bob Francis, Bennett Tarleton of Tennessee, who was in Montrose about ten years ago in order to do research on Francis, so stopped by the Historical Museum. He later sent an interview with Francis that had been done by Alice Finletter for “Modern Screen” magazine. Ed Hofmann was in the museum the day I received the papers from Tarleton and got quite a kick out of reading them since he had been involved with the movie crew and remembered so many of them.

In fact, he and Tad Paxton were invited to Hollywood by Director Wise, who sent his personal chauffeur to pick them up at the airport. Ed commented, “We were given the royal tour.”

A few years before, Ed was actually in another movie filmed at the Hughes Ranch on Wilson Mesa—“The Sheepman”, starring Glen Ford and Shirley MacLaine (her first).

Ed said, “I never did figure out if they hired me or my dog. I just know I signed the checks, ‘Bob and Ed’.”

“Bob” was Ed’s brother Bill’s sheep dog, who was a real whiz at working sheep. The director was so impressed with Bob that he wanted to take him back to Hollywood, but Bill Hofmann would not hear of such a thing.