John Beal (born January 20, 1947 in Santa Monica, California) is an American film composer and conductor working in Hollywood, California. He has composed the music for numerous television series, such as Vega$, Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley and Eight Is Enough and films such as The Funhouse and Terror in the Aisles. He is also a composer of film trailer music and works with the Hollywood Symphony Orchestra.

Early life

John Beal was born in Santa Monica, California, raised in La Cañada Flintridge, California, graduated from John Muir High School (Pasadena, California), where he was honored for having written many of the drum cadences for the school's internationally renowned Drum Corps, many of which are still used more than 50 years after his graduation. He was named to their Hall of Fame in 2008. In the 1976 Rose Parade, the UCLA Marching Band added his cadence "JB" into their repertoire He attended San Diego State University and, after being decorated for heroism and bravery in combat with the United States Marine Corps, he attended UCLA. He studied percussion with William Kraft and Bernie Mattinson, and drums with Irv Cotler (drummer for Frank Sinatra), composition with Harry Partch scholar Danlee Mitchell, synthesizers with Clark Spangler, and film scoring with Dominic Frontiere, George Duning, Buddy Baker, Fred Werner, Eddy Lawrence Manson and Earle Hagen. In his early film career, and like many of the young composers of the day, he ghost wrote the scores for numerous major motion pictures and hit television shows and orchestrated and supervised the recording sessions for many others.

John Beal may refer to:

See also

John Beal (August 13, 1909 – April 26, 1997) was an American actor.

Life and career

Beal was born James Alexander Bliedung in Joplin, Missouri. He originally went to New York to study art but a chance to understudy in a play made him change his mind. He began acting in the 1930s, opposite Katharine Hepburn (in the 1934 RKO film The Little Minister), among others; one of his notable screen appearances was as Marius Pontmercy in Les Misérables (1935). He continued appearing in films during the war years while serving in Special Services and the First Motion Picture Unit as actor and director of Army Air Forces camp shows and training films.

Beal had starring roles in the film dramas Alimony (1949) and My Six Convicts (1952). In the 1950s, he also began appearing in various television shows, including the title role of mining engineer Philip Deidesheimer in a 1959 episode of the Bonanza series, "The Deidesheimer Story".

He was hired to play the role of Jim Matthews in the television soap opera Another World when the show went on the air in 1964, but was fired by creator and headwriter Irna Phillips after only one episode.