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Washington Post 10/11/00
Reviewed by Grace Lichtenstein

"Although about Deam, the book reads less like "Rebel Without a Cause," than one of those older, innocent Judy Garland - Mickey Rooney movie scripts. The year is 1951. Dizzy, then 22, and her beau to be, an actor seeking theatrical roles, meet at a show biz boarding house in Manhattan. They sip drinks at a nearby drugstore soda fountain and share burgers at the show crowd's hangout, Jerry's, down the block. They dance at dawn on the deserted sands of Coney Island and stage make-believe bullfights on the grass of Central Park. They are a couple of happy-go-lucky kids, with no money but lots of talent and a trunk full of ambition.
This rather charming tale is told with bittersweet affection by Sheridan, best known in her post-Dean period as the actress who played Jerry Seinfeld's mother on TV. She offers us a well-drawn portrait of New York and its world behind the footlights in what now seems a less sophisticated age."

Chicago Tribune 9/28/00
Reviewed by Julia Kellen

"Dizzy and Jimmy constitutes a precious clue for anyone who has wondered at the staying power of the Dean myth. Sheridan evokes those faraway days - back when live television dramas were an exciting new venue for actors - with freshness and urgency, as if she's whispering to her best friend. Even for those of us who weren't born yet, that world springs to life. It always seemed to be autumn and it always seemed to be raining and the air thrummed with possibility."

Beyond the Cover 10/00
By Rachel Martin

"Beginning the year after Dean's death, numerous people tried to capture his life through books and movies, but none fully described the innocent, driven boy she loved, Sheridan says. Because she still missed him, she chose to mourn his loss quietly. 'I missed the friendship,' she says. 'I still miss that love. I miss the giggles.'
A few years ago, she suddenly became bothered by the way people reported on Dean. 'I wanted to write something nice about Jimmy because most of the books hit upon how dark and somber his personality was, and how into drugs and drinking and sexual diversion and the homosexual thing and, Oh God, they just go on and on and on, some of them. And they're so raunchy, and they're so wrong,' she says. 'I thought somebody should write something nice.'
Sheridan also questions how well his different biographers actually knew him. 'So many people seem to think that they know more than anybody else about it,' she says. 'If he had all the friends that he was supposed to have had and all the invites and all the affairs, he wouldn't have been able to make a movie. He would've been too busy.'
Another irritation that puzzles Sheridan is that some accounts neglect to mention her at all. 'It would be hard to write about Jimmy in New York City without mentioning me because I was with him almost all the time, so that's the kind of thing that drives me mad,' she says. 'I just wanted to get my story out. That's what started this whole thing. I just want people to know. Kind of didn't want to be swept aside.'

From Library Journal

Two love stories. One funny and sweet. One curious but poignant. Both authors linked by a coincidence: they were both characters on the TV sitcom Seinfeld. Before Stiller played George Costanza's father on Seinfeld, he was one half of the comedy team Stiller and Meara, a successful collaboration, in part because Anne Meara was his wife. This is not only the story of Stiller's rise from poverty to become a successful actor and comedian but also the story of a "showbiz" marriage, the unlikely pairing of a Jewish boy and an Irish girl who struggled to stay together for over 30 years. It's a very straightforward memoir with lots of insider, "showbizzy" anecdotes.
Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

From Publisher's Weekly - Publishers Weekly

Sheridan, best known as Jerry Seinfeld's TV mother, reveals her love affair with James Dean in a brief book replete with moony dialogue, prescient remarks about Dean's driving habits and a 1950s New York setting. The effervescent Sheridan, known as Dizzy, was a dancer living in a theater district residence hall for aspiring actresses when she met the 21-year-old Dean, an Indiana farm boy who had come to New York via Hollywood. Their instant attraction was soon consummated. Sheridan portrays Dean as a sometimes corny romantic, who immediately began talking about being "together forever" and who needed "always to touch and be touched." While Dizzy managed to work, dancing in nightclubs all over New York or in summer stock musicals, Jimmy was either more unlucky or more choosy, and brooded over his disappointments. Though she touches on Dean's moody episodes and regular, unexplained disappearances, as well as his disclosure of a homosexual liaison with a California producer helpful to his career, Sheridan doesn't claim that her memoir is a complete account of Dean's New York years. (For example, there's no mention of his acceptance into the Actors Studio in November 1951.) When Dean was cast in a bound-for-Broadway production, he moved easily away from Sheridan. Dean got enthusiastic notices in See the Jaguar, although the play closed in a few days, and the affair never rekindled. Sheridan's feelings for Dean, her pain upon their separation and on his untimely death a few years later, are sweetly rendered and seem genuine, although the details are filtered though a romanticized lens.
Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.