SANTA FE, New Mexico — Gene Hackman was many things, most notably an award-winning actor, but what many don’t know is that Hackman loved a good prank.
His friend and former business partner, Doug Lanham, 76, said he played golf with Hackman, and while on the course, they’d make bets — something he said Hackman never thought was a good idea.
Lanham told NBC News that after a couple of years, he asked Hackman to pony up the $22 he owed.
Sure enough, Hackman repaid his friend, in $22 worth of pennies, wheeled into the restaurant they owned together in a big tool chest, Lanham recalled, along with a note that read: “I paid this debt under protest as I deem it to be taking advantage of old people.” Hackman signed the letter “Captain Hollywood,” a nickname his friends called him.
Lanham and Hackman met years ago, when Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, came into the restaurant Lanham owns, Jinja Bar & Bistro in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with a mutual friend. Lanham said he invited the couple back the next day to cook at his restaurant, and the couple obliged.
“We cooked and we had so much fun and at some point Gene and Betsy … they said ‘we want to invest,’ and coming off losing a quarter of a million dollars [in the first year] we said ‘that’s a great idea,’” Lanham recalled.
They were business partners for almost 10 years, Lanham said.
Hackman and Arakawa were found dead in separate rooms of their Santa Fe, New Mexico, home on Wednesday. Officials have called their deaths “suspicious.”
One of the couple’s dogs — a female German Shepherd named Bear, according to Lanham — was found dead in a kennel, while two others were found alive on the property.
The cause and manner of death have not been determined, the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office said Friday.
An initial autopsy showed no sign of external trauma to either Hackman or Arakawa, and the couple tested negative for carbon monoxide poisoning, Sheriff Adan Mendoza said Friday. Results from toxicology tests and the full autopsy are pending.
Hackman likely died on Feb. 17 — the last date his pacemaker recorded an “event,” Mendoza said. He earlier said the couple had been dead “quite a while” by the time they were found.
Hackman and Arakawa were very private people, something Mendoza said Friday has complicated efforts to put together a timeline of their final days, and which Lanham reiterated.
Lanham discussed how the couple helped a lot of local businesses financially, “but always under the radar,” he said, because they didn’t want or need the credit. The same goes for the 14 original artworks Hackman painted that line the walls of Jinja — none of them are signed; another attempt by the Hollywood icon to steer focus away from himself.
“It’s heartbreaking, it’s perplexing,” Lanham said of their deaths and the mystery surrounding them. “They were so dignified and to read about it, to hear about it, there’s no way to connect the dots when you know them as people.”
Lanham expected that his friend would die one day — Hackman was 95 at the time of his death — “But not like this,” he said.
“It’s totally out of the realm of anything that you would associate with the two of them and that’s what just brings you to your knees,” he said.
‘The common man’
Lanham said “it was just a privilege” to be friends with Hackman, whom he called “the best.”
“When there was trust and that door opened, it was amazing,” Lanham said.
He said Hackman had a “heart of gold” and said he was “very lucky” for their years of friendship.
Stuart Ashman, a friend of Hackman’s through pilates classes and work at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, said one of the most impressive things about Hackman is how when he spoke to you, he really wanted to know you. Lanham said the same.
“He was the common man,” Ashman said of Hackman. “He was very easy going, really enjoyed life, I think. And really was interested in everything, in everything and everybody.”
Ashman said Hackman “really added to the texture of Santa Fe in a big way.”
In a statement, Jesse Kesler, the couple’s personal contractor, thanked them “for the 16 plus years of opportunity, friendship and trust.”
He specifically thanked Hackman for lending a hand on projects and for treating his son and employees as equals.
He said when Hackman was on the job, he was just another one of the guys.
“I could not believe at the time I was actually working side by side with a legend,” Kesler said.
Dana Griffin reported from Santa Fe and Rebecca Cohen from New York City.
