Celebrity News

Joel Schumacher’s Streisand flashback

Joel Schumacher, who directed “Batman and Robin” and “Phone Booth,” took a walk down memory lane at The Lion, the new John DeLucie restaurant on West Ninth Street, which was once Village and Bondini. Schumacher — at the Cinema Society party after the screening of “Multiple Sarcasms” — checked out the high- ceilinged dining room with its huge skylight and eclectic art collection and recalled that, back in the late ’50s, it was a gay bar, also called The Lion, and he worked there as a teen ager. One night, Schumacher watched a shy and unknown singer named Barbra Streisand take the stage at the bar’s talent contest.