6 Items From the Gene Hackman Auction: His Art, Scripts and Galaga

[Special thanks to Lewis Saret (Attorney, Washington, D.C.) for bringing this article to my attention.]

In his final decades Gene Hackman lived just outside of Santa Fe, N.M., where he had escaped Hollywood in search of a quieter life steeped in art and nature.

The home he shared with his wife, Betsy Arakawa, was a hideaway of sorts at end of a cul-de-sac in a gated community, far from the eyes of a curious public. The discovery of their bodies in February in separate rooms of their home stunned and saddened many. Investigators later determined that Arakawa, 65, died first of a rare viral infection and Hackman, 95, who had Alzheimer’s disease, died about a week later of heart disease.

Now the auction house Bonhams is preparing to sell a collection of more than 400 items from the compound, including the artworks Hackman created and collected, memorabilia from his 40-year film career and personal items, including his Ray-Ban sunglasses.

The items sold in the auction include:

• Draft of a “Silence of the Lambs” film script he never made
• A Gene Hackman original landscape painting
• Arcade game Galaga (circa 1981)
• Personal notes on art
• 1957 painting by the American modernist Milton Avery titled “Figure on the Jetty.”
• The bronze bust he made of Betsy

The sale, which will take place online and in a live auction in New York next month, provides a rare window into the final refuge of actor who devoted much of his later life to art.

For more information see Julia Jacobs “6 Items From the Gene Hackman Auction: His Art, Scripts and Galaga,” The New York Times, October 24, 2025.