John Cacavas

John Cacavas

Birth : 1930-08-13, Aberdeen, South Dakota, USA

Death : 2014-01-28

History

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia John Harry Cacavas (August 13, 1930 – January 28, 2014) was an American composer and conductor probably best known for his television scores, such as Kojak, for which he was the chief composer. He also composed the show's second main title theme for its 5th and final season in 1977-1978.

Profile

John Cacavas

Movies

Perfect Murder, Perfect Town: JonBenét and the City of Boulder
Original Music Composer
About the infamous murder of six year old child beauty pageant contestant JonBenét Ramsey and the hysterical media coverage that made the investigation even more difficult.
The Return of Ironside
Sound
After forty years of good and faithful services, Robert T. Ironside, reprocessed police force of San Francisco, is finally on the point of tasting with the joys of a rest deserved well with Katherine, his wife, in their vineyard recently bought. However, a few days after his official departure, he is contacted by persons in charge for the police force of Denver, which offers the post of general manager temporarily to him their services, following the assassination for preceding occupying of the station in question. Initially reticent, Ironside ends up yielding and, with the agreement of his wife, agrees to take up the challenge, the more so as he has pleasure to find Susan, the girl of the one of her former assistants.
Margaret Bourke-White
Original Music Composer
A biographical account of pioneering photographer Margaret Bourke-White's career.
The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal Mission
Music
A renegade team of World War II soldiers. This time, one of the 12 is a woman and, with a Nazi spy within their midst, they're up against German wartime geniuses out to establish a Fourth Reich.
Body of Evidence
Music
Nurse Carol Dwyer suspects that her new husband Alex, a forensic psychologist, may be responsible for serial murders in their neighborhood.
The Dirty Dozen: The Deadly Mission
Music
Learning of a Nazi plot to attack Washington, D.C. with a deadly nerve gas, Major Wright leads twelve convicts on a suicide mission deep into occupied France to destroy the secret factory where the poison is made.
A Time to Triumph
Music
Murder: By Reason of Insanity
Music
A married couple from Poland emigrates to the U.S.,. but things don't turn out as well as they had imaged. The husband's business fails, while his wife's career really takes off. The husband, unable to cope with the pressures of his failed business, his failing marriage and the adjustments necessary to live in a completely different society, begins to take out his frustrations on his wife.
They're Playing with Fire
Original Music Composer
A married college professor decides to seduce her student, whom she hired as a handyman for her yacht. The hesitant student succumbs to his buxom professor, but their romance is interrupted by her corrupt husband and a masked murderer.
Women of San Quentin
Music
A young female prison guard finds out that her first assignment is to San Quentin, one of the toughest prisons in the country.
Mortuary
Songs
Christie Parson has constant nightmares of her father's death whom died in a swimming pool. Christie's mother thinks it was an accident, but Christie believes it was murder. Christie then sees an unknown figure dressed in a cape following her and harassing her. But still nobody believes her, until her boyfriend sees the figure himself. The figure hides in the town mortuary which is owned by Hank Andrews and his demented son, Paul. Both are trying to form rituals to bring back Dr. Parson's spirit. But, who is this figure and why is he harassing Christie?
Mortuary
Original Music Composer
Christie Parson has constant nightmares of her father's death whom died in a swimming pool. Christie's mother thinks it was an accident, but Christie believes it was murder. Christie then sees an unknown figure dressed in a cape following her and harassing her. But still nobody believes her, until her boyfriend sees the figure himself. The figure hides in the town mortuary which is owned by Hank Andrews and his demented son, Paul. Both are trying to form rituals to bring back Dr. Parson's spirit. But, who is this figure and why is he harassing Christie?
Still the Beaver
Original Music Composer
This movie reunites most of the members of the Cleaver clan, Wally, June, and of course, the Beaver. Their father Ward has passed away. Wally's married to Mary Ellen and a successful lawyer and has everything to make his life complete except for a child. The Beaver is married but unfortunately is still the same which is why his wife threw him out. With nowhere else to go, he goes home. And he also decides that he wants to raise his children, in his hometown of Mayfield. His wife, who decides that she hasn't done anything in her life, decides to become a veterinarian, but she can only go to school out of the country, so she let's Beaver have the children. So he brings his sons there and they are not exactly impressed with Mayfield and feel that they were dumped there, and bond more with Wally than with their own father. They also have to deal with Eddie Haskell, who has gone from nasty to crooked. It's a good thing they still have their mom.
The Executioner's Song
Original Music Composer
In this fact-based made-for TV film, Gary Gilmore, an Indiana man who just finished serving a lengthy stay in prison, tries to start anew by moving to Utah. Before long, Gary begins an ill-advised romance with the troubled Nicole Baker, a teenage single mother. As their relationship quickly deteriorates, Gary goes on a murderous rampage, leaving two dead. During his trial, he demands capital punishment; a media circus ensues and outsiders look to profit from his story.
Silent Rebellion
Music
A Greek immigrant (Savalas) and his son return to Greece, where they reunite with mother and brother and re-discover their heritage and each other. Cross-cultural misunderstandings abound; could have been interesting, but the story is just too generic and uninspired.
Child Bride of Short Creek
Music
A dramatization of the true account of a fundamentalist sect in Arizona that practices polygamy, and a returning Korean War veteran's rebellion against his father when he learns that the latter plans to increase his stable of wives by adding the 15-year-old girl with whom his son is romantically involved.
California Gold Rush
Original Music Composer
Author Bret Harte relates the story of the discovery of gold in California at Sutter's Mill, and how that discovery changed the history of the west forever.
Separate Ways
Original Music Composer
A wife unhappy in her marriage begins an affair with an art student, unaware that her husband, a race driver, is also having an affair.
Gangster Wars
Music
The film tells the story of three teenagers, based on real life gangsters Charles "Lucky" Luciano (Michael Nouri), Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel (Joe Penny) and Michael Lasker (Brian Benben) (a fictional character who was most likely modeled after Meyer Lansky), growing up in New York's ghettos during the early 1900s to their rise though organized crime.
Hellinger's Law
Music
A flamboyant criminal lawyer named Nick Hellinger takes on the case of a syndicate's accountant (actually a Justice Department agent who has infiltrated the mob) accused of murdering a local TV newscaster.
No Place to Hide
Original Music Composer
A young art student frantically tries to prove that she is being stalked by a mysterious man who has threatened her life, and finds her sanity questioned by her stepmother, the family attorney, and even a psychiatrist.
Once Upon a Spy
Original Music Composer
Computer genius and chess champion Ted Danson is lured into service by secret agent Eleanor Parker and becomes a reluctant hero thanks to a number of exploits with villainous Christopher Lee and his army of lethal blue-eyed blonde women.
Hangar 18
Original Music Composer
During a Space Shuttle mission a satellite rams a unidentified flying object. The UFO afterwards performs an emergency landing in the deserts of Arizona. However the White House denies its existence because of the near presidential elections. The UFO is brought to the secret Hangar 18 and the accident is blamed on the incompetence of the astronauts Bancroff and Price. But the two fight against this and try to hunt down the UFO.
The Time Machine
Original Music Composer
A scientist builds a machine that will enable him to travel back and forth in time, but when he puts it in motion, he gets more than he bargained for.
Human Feelings
Original Music Composer
Heavenly Mrs. G. (Nancy Walker) will level Las Vegas if an angel (Billy Crystal) cannot find six good people there within a week.
B.J. and the Bear
Music
In this pilot film, B.J. McKay, a guitar-playing independent trucker who travels with a fun-loving chimpanzee named Bear, finds himself caught up with a bunch of young women trying to flee a white slaver who happens to be the local sheriff.
Superdome
Music
It's the biggest event of the year — the Super Bowl! But the star players for the Cougars, gathered in New Orleans for the big game, are preoccupied with some serious off-the-field issues. Dave Walecki's marriage to his wife Nancy is falling apart, while Jim McCauley is involved in a shady deal with a management firm that could destroy his career. But that's nothing compared to the real drama. There's an assassin killing off many of the team's personnel (as well as their chances of winning)!
Relentless
Original Music Composer
An Arizona state trooper, who is also an Indian, pursues a gang of paramilitary-type robbers into the mountains. The gang has killed the trooper's uncle and taken a woman hostage, and the trooper must use his tracking and hunting skills to find the gang and rescue the hostage.
Murder at the World Series
Music Supervisor
A disturbed young man threatens violence at the World Series after failing to make the Houston Astros.
Airport '77
Original Music Composer
Flight 23 has crashed in the Bermuda Triangle after a hijacking gone wrong. Now the surviving passengers must brave panic, slow leaks, oxygen depletion, and more while attempting a daring plan, all while 200 feet underwater.
SST: Death Flight
Music
On its maiden flight, the crew of America's first supersonic transport learns that it may not be able to land, due to an act of sabotage and a deadly flu onboard.
Friendly Persuasion
Music
During the Civil War, a Quaker couple risks their lives by helping runaway slaves.
Airport 1975
Original Music Composer
When an in-flight collision incapacitates the pilots of an airplane bound for Los Angeles, stewardess Nancy Pryor is forced to take over the controls. From the ground, her boyfriend Alan Murdock, a retired test pilot, tries to talk her through piloting and landing the 747 aircraft. Worse yet, the anxious passengers — among which are a noisy nun and a cranky man — are aggravating the already tense atmosphere.
The Elevator
Original Music Composer
A claustrophobic armed robber, fleeing from his latest job, finds himself trapped with a group of people between floors in a high-rise building's elevator that is teetering on collapse.
Blade
Original Music Composer
A homicide detective goes after a woman-hating serial killer, who uses knives to murder his victims.
Linda
Music
A woman kills her lover's wife, then sets out to frame her husband for the murder.
The Satanic Rites of Dracula
Original Music Composer
The police and British security forces call in Professor Van Helsing to help them investigate Satanic ritual which has been occurring in a large country house, and which has been attended by a government minister, an eminent scientist and secret service chief. The owner of the house is a mysterious property tycoon who is found to be behind a sinister plot involving a deadly plague. It is in fact Dracula who, sick of his interminable existence, has decided that he must end it all in the only possible way- by destroying every last potential victim.
She Cried Murder
Music
Fashion model Sarah Cornell, from the front car of a subway, witnesses a man pushing a woman onto the tracks to her death. Hoping to dispel the presumption that the woman committed suicide, Sarah contacts the police. But when they arrive to take her statement, she recognizes one of the detectives as the killer. Can she get anyone to believe her before she becomes his next victim?
Pánico en el Transiberiano
Original Music Composer
Mysterious and unearthly deaths start to occur while Professor Saxton is transporting the frozen remains of a primitive humanoid creature he found in Manchuria back to Europe.