Amy Ricard
Amy Ricard (January 1, 1882 — August 17, 1937) was an American actress and suffragist.
Early life
Amy Ricard was born in Boston, Massachusetts and raised in Denver, Colorado.[1] Her mother was Emma A. Ricard.[2] She studied acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.[3] She also trained as a soprano singer, with Horton Kennedy.[4]
Career
Ricard appeared in Broadway in The Pride of Jennico (1900), Janice Meredith (1900-1901), The Stubbornness of Geraldine by Clyde Fitch (1902),[5] Babes in Toyland by Victor Herbert (1903-1904),[6][7] The College Widow (1904-1905),[8] Mary and John (1905), Matilda (1906-1907), The Literary Sense (1908), The Reckoning (1908),[9] Girls by Clyde Fitch (1908 and 1909), The Torches (1917),[10] The Woman on the Index (1918), and Those Who Walk in Darkness (1919).[11] On the Boston stage, with her husband Lester Lonergan, she starred in An Idyl of Erin (1910).[12]
Dorothy Parker wrote of The Woman on the Index in Vanity Fair, saying "The thing was so well done. You know yourself that with a cast including Julia Dean, Amy Ricard, and Lester Lonergan, you can't really have such a terrible evening."[13]
Amy Ricard made her political views in favor of women's suffrage public, wearing a "Votes for Women" pin and speaking at suffrage events in New York City.[14]
Personal life
Amy Ricard's engagement to poet and editor Charles Hanson Towne was announced in 1908,[15][16] but she married Irish actor and playwright Lester Lonergan, as his third wife, in 1909. The couple owned a summer cottage on Indian Island in Maine, which was among the buildings removed by the Portland Water District in 1922 to return the island to an undeveloped state.[17] Ricard was widowed in 1931,[18] and she died in 1937, aged 55, in New York City.[19][20]
References
- Dixie Hines, Harry Prescott Hanaford, eds., Who's Who in Music and Drama (H. P. Hanaford 1914): 260.
- "The Record of Deaths" New York Dramatic Mirror (May 14, 1910): 12.
- Johnson Briscoe, The Actors' Birthday Book (Moffatt, Yard and Company 1908): 19.
- "Miss Amy Ricard" Buffalo Times (February 15, 1903): 2. via Newspapers.com
- "Mary Mannering's New Play" Munsey's Magazine (January 1903): 625-626.
- William A. Everett, Paul R. Laird, Historical Dictionary of the Broadway Musical (Rowman & Littlefield 2015): 29-30. ISBN 9781442256699
- "Amy Ricard Will Star in the New Opera by Victor Herbert" Pittsburgh Weekly Gazette (March 20, 1903): 14. via Newspapers.com
- "This Week's Plays" Washington Post (September 11, 1904): 5. via Newspapers.com
- "Schnitzler's Plays at Madison Square" New York Times (January 14, 1908): 7. via ProQuest
- "In the Spotlight" Theatre Magazine (December 1917): 348.
- Alexander Woollcott, "The Play" New York Times (August 15, 1919): 12. via ProQuest
- "Boston Theatres" Journal of Education (September 8, 1910): 223.
- Dorothy Parker & Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918-1923 (2014): 40. ISBN 9781491722657
- "Pretty Gotham Actress Becomes Suffragette" Oakland Tribune (May 7, 1908): 7. via Newspapers.com
- Untitled social item, Washington Post (February 23, 1908): 2. via Newspapers.com
- "Amy Ricard to Wed Charles H. Towne" New York Times (February 15, 1908): 7. via ProQuest
- "Indian Island summer cottage owned by actors Amy Ricard and Lester Lonergan, Standish, 1923", Portland Water District, Maine Memory Network.
- "Lester Lonergan Dies Suddenly" Daily News (August 15, 1931): 54. via Newspapers.com
- "Mrs. Amy Lonergan" Brooklyn Daily Eagle (August 18, 1937): 11. via Newspapers.com
- "Mrs. Lester Lonergan" New York Times (August 18, 1937): 19. via ProQuest
External links
- Amy Ricard at the Internet Broadway Database
- Amy Ricard Lonergan's gravesite on Find a Grave.
- A photo of Laura Nelson Hall, Ruth Maycliffe, and Amy Ricard in Girls, from the American Vaudeville Museum Archive, Special Collections, University of Arizona Libraries.