Nancy Dowd

Academy Award-winning screenwriter Nancy Dowd was born in Framingham and grew up on Berkshire Road. She graduated from Framingham High School in 1962, where she was vice president of the drama club and assistant editor of the newspaper. After going on to Smith College, she taught English in Japan before enrolling in the film program at UCLA. 

There, she worked as an assistant to the famed Hollywood director, King Vidor. Her first film credit was for work on F.T.A. (1972), a documentary on shows organized by Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland to entertain G.I.’s. Fonda then commissioned Dowd to write “Buffalo Ghosts,” about a wounded Vietnam Veteran returning home, that later became the 1978 movie Coming Home. Although Dowd was unhappy with the revisions to her script, she shared the “Best Original Screenplay” Oscar. 

She was much happier with another film she wrote, Slap Shot, starring Paul Newman and Michael Ontkean. This film was inspired by her younger brother’s experience playing minor league hockey. Ned Dowd (Framingham South High School 1968) played at Bowdoin College and McGill University before getting signed to the St. Louis Blues’ affiliate in Pennsylvania, the Johnstown Jets. Nancy spent a month on the road with the team, resulting in the 1977 classic sports film. 

She went on to an extensive career as a screenwriter (sometimes uncredited) for television’s “Saturday Night Live,” and films such as North Dallas Forty, Ordinary People, Ladies and Gentlemen – The Fabulous Stains, Swing Shift, White Nights, and Let It Ride.