Painfully shy Sheila Levine relocates from Pennsylvania to New York City against the wishes of her parents who want her to get married. Sheila moves in with Kate, a sexy, extroverted aspiring actress with a busy social life. At Kate's suggestion, Sheila visits a nightclub, where she meets Sam, a bachelor doctor who persuades the naive Sheila to spend the night with him. Sheila has the first good sex of her life with Sam, but when she expresses romantic feelings for him, he lets her know he considers their encounter just a one-night stand, "satisfying an urge". Sheila leaves his apartment upset, saying she never wants to see him again. Some time later, Sheila and Sam meet again when he arrives at her apartment to take Kate on a blind date. Sheila and Sam find they are still attracted to each other, but when Kate appears, she easily lures Sam's attention away from Sheila. To Sheila's chagrin, Kate and Sam begin a steady relationship. When Sheila's younger sister marries, Sheila moves back to her parents' home in Pennsylvania, planning to stay, but she quickly realizes she no longer fits in there and misses Sam, who by now is living with Kate. Sheila returns to New York City and tries to win Sam back, only to find that Sam and Kate are engaged and that Kate is pregnant. Kate later tells Sheila that Sam is only marrying her because he thinks the baby is his, but it is actually another man's child, and Kate plans to have a secret abortion after she and Sam are married. Sheila remains in New York and concentrates on her new career as a producer of children's records. Sam eventually faces the fact that he loves Sheila, not Kate, and he and Kate break up. Sam proposes to Sheila; the film ends before she gives him her answer.
Cast
Critical reception
of The New York Times did not care for the film, although he liked the novel on which the film was based. Arthur D. Murphy of Variety wrote "Substantially different from Gail Parent's book of the same title, the film version of Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living in New York is a very appealing romantic drama with comedy... Jeannie Berlin's title role performance is outstanding, and Roy Scheider's excellent performance as her reluctant lover is a major career milestone." Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film three stars out of four and called it "a surprisingly warm and funny tale," with a protagonist "who is someone special. Most movie women, and most movie men for that matter, know exactly what they want to do or what they feel at any given moment in the film. The source of their knowledge is that their lives have been scripted and that the actors involved can't breathe unpredictability into predictable responses. In the final analysis, it is the unpredictability of its lead characters that makes 'Sheila Levine' intriguing." Gary Arnold of The Washington Post wrote of the adaptation from page to screen that "it's difficult to understand why the material was transformed into romantic idiocy. Hollow as it sounded, the original jokey tone was far preferable to this humorless sentimentality." Pauline Kael of The New Yorker declared "A confused, part-liberated rehash of old Hollywood attitudes toward the young girl working in the big city, Sheila Levine isn't much of a movie." Despite an advertising campaign featuring a poster with the quote "Jeannie Berlin triumphs!" as attributed to critic Leonard Maltin, the film was given a BOMB rating in his Movie Guide, with him saying "Dead is right."
