Amy Ricard

Amy Ricard (January 1, 1882 – August 17, 1937) was an American actress and suffragist whose Broadway career spanned the first two decades of the twentieth century. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, she was raised in Denver, Colorado by her mother, Emma A. Ricard. She trained as an actress at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and studied soprano singing under Horton Kennedy.

Ricard made her Broadway debut in 1900 and remained active on the New York stage through 1919. Her earliest credits included The Pride of Jennico and Janice Meredith, both from the 1900–1901 season. She appeared in two productions written by Clyde Fitch: The Stubbornness of Geraldine in 1902 and Girls, which ran in both 1908 and 1909. Victor Herbert's musical Babes in Toyland occupied her from 1903 to 1904, followed by The College Widow in the 1904–1905 season and Mary and John in 1905. Additional Broadway appearances included Matilda (1906–1907), The Literary Sense (1908), The Reckoning (1908), The Master Builder, The Torches (1917), The Woman on the Index (1918), and Those Who Walk in Darkness (1919). Writing in Vanity Fair, Dorothy Parker praised The Woman on the Index, citing the cast that included Ricard alongside Julia Dean and Lester Lonergan as a reason the production could not be considered a poor evening. Beyond New York, Ricard performed on the Boston stage with her husband in An Idyl of Erin in 1910.

Outside the theater, Ricard was publicly committed to women's suffrage. She wore a "Votes for Women" pin and spoke at suffrage events in New York City.

In her personal life, Ricard's engagement to poet and editor Charles Hanson Towne was announced in 1908, but she instead married Irish actor and playwright Lester Lonergan in 1909, becoming his third wife. The couple maintained a summer cottage on Indian Island in Maine until 1922, when the Portland Water District removed the structure along with other buildings to restore the island to an undeveloped state. Lonergan died in 1931, leaving Ricard a widow. She died on August 17, 1937, in New York City, at the age of 55.