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42 C I N E M O N T A G E C H R I S W I L L I N G H A M D E C E M B E R 25, 1950 – J U N E 28, 2025 L ike many picture editors from an earlier era, Chris Willingham, ACE, never went to film school — the offi- cial kind, anyway. Instead, it might be said that Willingham went to a series of ersatz film schools, including beginning his pro- fessional life in the newsroom at what was then KHJ-TV (Channel 9) in Los Angeles and launching his Hollywood career at Ste- phen J. Cannell Productions. "You really had to learn how to work with any kind of film," said Willingham's widow, Lynne Willingham, ACE, about her future husband's early years with Cannell. Chris Willingham died in June 2025 at the age of 74. "Chris liked that atmosphere," she said. "It was very much like a campus." From those formative experiences, Willingham built a reputation as a creative, enterprising, and generous editor on tele- vision, including a stint on the massively influential show "24" that netted him three Primetime Emmy Awards out of five nom- inations. His other notable shows include Cannell's 1980s-era staples "The A-Team" and "21 Jump Street" as well as, for pro- ducer Chris Carter, "The X-Files," on which he worked with Lynne, also a distinguished picture editor. "Chris had a knack for fearless, some- times acrobatic editing to tell the story in its best light," said picture editor Casey O. Rohrs, who first worked with Willingham in 1982 at Stephen J. Cannell Productions. "I was always amazed at how effortless he made huge complicated scenes appear to be. Sometimes his editing was perfectly in- visible, when it was appropriate, and other times, so impactful and energetic that you couldn't help but think, 'Holy cow, what an amazing editor this man is!'" Chris Willingham was born in Culver City to Gordon Willingham, a cameraman for ABC, and his wife, Rosemary. His par- ents divorced when he was in childhood. Following a stretch in the Navy, he sought and found employment in the mailroom at KHJ. "A lot of us start in the mailroom," Lynne Willingham said. "He just worked over into editing news clips and cutting down movies and things like that." A f te r s e v e ra l y e a r s a t t h e s ta t i o n , Willingham was alerted to an opening at Universal Pictures but with the under- standing that he would have to start within a matter of days. "He could not give them notice, which really ticked them off at KHJ," Lynne Willingham said. "But he went to Universal and he got into [the] IA and ma- jors and never looked back." Within a short period of time, Willing- ham caught on with Stephen J. Cannell, who had been at Universal Television. "When Stephen went to start his own studio, he first made 'The Greatest American Hero,' and they moved to the Paramount lot," Lynne Willingham said. By then, Chris Will- ingham had accumulated picture editing credits on "B.J. and the Bear" and other popular series of the time. "Stephen took a lot of editors with him, and Chris was one." W i l l i n g h a m's t e n u re w i t h C a n n e l l lasted for about 10 years. "He was the most prolific producer in Hollywood," said Lynne Willingham, who was also employed at the studio. "At the height of that studio, we had 21 film editors. We had seven shows on the air, and a complete sound department that was just on all year long." Picture editor David Latham also met Willingham while working for Cannell on "The Greatest American Hero." "He was very generous to work with, letting me cut scenes and [giving] me credit if the producers liked my work," Latham, then an assistant, said of Willingham. "That led to my promotion to editor on 'The A-Team.' Subsequently, we both moved on to cut '21 Jump Street.'" Latham added: "He was admired for his instinctive talent and well-liked for his good nature and wonderful sense of humor." As it turned out, Stephen J. Cannell Productions not only provided Willingham with considerable cutting room experience but also proved consequential in an entirely different way: it was there that he met Lynne. "I was an assistant and he was an editor," Lynne Willingham said. "I never assisted him, which was probably a really good thing, but we just ran into each other and it sort of blossomed." they found they connected on multiple levels. "The good thing about a marriage if you're both doing the same thing is that you can keep talking about it," Lynne Willingham said. "We had a producer once who said, 'I love that you two are married because I know what happens. You're giving me 24 hours a day.'" C h r i s a n d Ly n n e m a r r i e d i n 1 9 8 8 , although in the years that followed, it was comparatively rare for them to toil on the same show. One such series was "The X-Files." "It was really fun," Lynne Willing- ham said. "We did share assistants, because it was three [editors] and two [assistants] at the time. But there wasn't really a lot of overlap. I don't even know at the time if either of us picked up scenes for each other." The couple also traveled to Italy to collab- orate on the historical drama "Empire," which aired on ABC in 2005. Af ter his tour of duty with Cannell was complete, Willingham progressed to working with the writing-producing team of Glen Morgan and James Wong on "Space: Above and Beyond." From 2001 to 2005, Willingham arguably reached the summit of his career with his run editing episodes I N M E M O R I A M