The Roman Polanski mess is becoming divisive, that’s for sure. Last night I appeared on Joy Behar’s new talk show on Headline News. Joy is on the fence, although I think she’s leaning toward extradition. The other panelist, Jeanine Pirro, kept shouting “Rape!” Yours truly took a milder stand.

Sources close to Polanski tell me, as we all know by now, that he will fight extradition. But what caused this situation? Switzerland, I think, has a lot to answer for. They’ve harbored U.S. fugitives for years. Marc Rich – an evil man who conducted business with enemies of the state and wouldn’t pay millions in taxes — lived there from 1983 until Bill Clinton pardoned him in January 2001. No one went near him, and Rich ran a worldwide billion dollar business with offices right under the FBI’s nose in White Plains, New York. I mean, who’s kidding who?

The answer is: more and more, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office was embarrassed by Polanski. First there was Marina Zenovich’s excellent documentary, “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.” The film showed the lunacy of Polanski’s original judge, Lawrence Rittenbrand, and the malfeasance of the court.

Then starting last January 2009, Polanski’s lawyers — emboldened by the film — started filing motions against the court. Samantha Geimer, Polanski’s victim, also filed to have the charges dismissed. I am told that all through this year, Zenovich was filming in the courthouse. All of these things were like taunting the District Attorney: “Come and get me.”

Zenovich, by the way, has flown with her film crew to Switzerland. She’s making the sequel to “Wanted and Desired.”

You can read just about anywhere what Polanski did to Geimer in 1977 when she was 13 years old. It was obviously wrong. He made a plea bargain, served 43 days in prison, and expected that a final deal had been made with prosecutors. When he learned that Rittenbrand was going to ambush him, Polanski fled the U.S.

There are many things to say in Polanski’s defense thirty-one years later. He has never been accused of anything else. He is not a threat to the community, or the world. He’s been happily married for twenty years and has raised a family. It’s not unreasonable to say that this was an isolated moment in his life. Thirty-one years. As a judge said in a case I was once attending, where only 14 years had passed, “Murderers get off in less time.”

Indeed, in Los Angeles, celebrities accused of murder walk around as free men. O.J. Simpson is only in jail because of an unrelated case, in another state. Robert Blake lives a good life. It took two trials each to put away both the Menendezes and Phil Spector.

Without question it’s time to let the Roman Polanski story be over. He’s done his time. To paraphrase the Eagles’ “Desperado,” his prison was walking in a world all alone.

It was all the A list for Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman’s Broadway debut last night in “A Steady Rain.”

Among the crowd: Jerry and Jessica Seinfeld, Matthew Broderick, Whoopi Goldberg, Stephanie March and Bobby Flay,  Ellen Barkin, writer-director Doug McGrath, director Darren Aronofsky, Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber, a gaggle of network executives, plus of course, Hugh and Daniel.

At the Harvard Club after party, the two men — no doubt tired of looking at each other every night for 90 minutes — took up opposite corners and received well wishers. Hugh left early, he said he had to take his kid to school in the morning.

Daniel Craig, the surprise of the show, is getting tired of being asked the same question: does he mind not having action, and just dialogue?

“I’ve done plays before,” he said, a little irritated, and rightly so. We do tend to peg these actors for what brings them to our attention. They have whole long histories. Daniel Craig’s background is in theater. And his future is there, too.

So what next? Playwright Keith Huff is writing a screenplay based on the play, and the movie is on. Look for a frenzy among actresses age 35 for the pivotal role of Connie, unseen in the play but upon which the movie will hinge. Kate Winslet, are you reading this?

P.S. Producer Fred Zollo spent the night grinning from ear to ear. “Steady Rain” is the steadiest ticket on Broadway.

Want to hear something amazing? Look around on You Tube today for a video of Jennifer Hudson performing “Over the Rainbow” last night in Central Park. Hudson was featured during a live show preceding Netflix’s free outdoor screening of “The Wizard of Oz” in celebration of the film’s 70th anniversary. Hudson took the outdoor srstage at the Rumsey Playing Field, and unleashed “Ease On Down the Road” and “I Believe” with unprecedented power. But the precision and soul of her “Over the Rainbow” was startling. She’s turning into the great R&B diva of the new generation.

It’s hard to imagine that “The Wizard of Oz” and “Gone with the Wind” were each released in 1939, and directed more or less by the same man, Victor Fleming (he had help on each of them). Now “Oz” returns in a remastered DVD with glorious color and sound. It’s so good that Netflix didn’t mind putting it up on a big drive-in screen in front of 4,000 people who sang along, laughed, cried, and applauded in the middle of scenes last night.

Name the 10 best scenes in film. Certainly one of them, maybe the best, is Dorothy opening the door of her tornado tossed Kansas house, all black and white and dusty, to the spectacular color of Oz, the yellow brick road, Glenda the Good Witch, the Munchkins, and the ruby slippers. Seven decades have passed, but this was Dorothy opening the gate to a new world. Fleming’s film never stops from that moment to the one in which Dorothy and her pals — Bert Lahr seemed more exceptional than ever last night as the cowardly Lion — are first ushered in to see the Wizard. There’s no CGI, no fakery. Just awe that Fleming pulled this off, and burned down Tara almost simultaneously.

The remastered Oz is a two-disc set from Warner Home Video, released yesterday. I’m going to pick it up immediately, along with books by the great New York Times movie writer Aljean Harmetz on both “Oz” and “Gone with the Wind.” My new theory about “Oz” is that Toto is really the central character. More than Dorothy, Toto is is always in jeopardy and driving the action forward. Jacques Derrida could have a field day with this dog. His name means “all” or “altogether.” Brilliant! Maybe Harmetz can explain it for us.

Some people have no shame.

Now the Michael Jackson estate has filed suit in Los Angeles against a bunch of people who’ve hijacked Michael’s old Heal the World Foundation. They’re passing it off as their own and claiming Michael is their president emeritus.

This is too much. The real Heal the World was shut down several years ago. Nevertheless, two people who had nothing to do with Michael Jackson — Melissa Johnson and Mel Wilson — decided to reactivate the name, apply for a bunch of trademarks, and carry on as if Michael were running the show from the grave. He is not. This new Heal the World Foundation has nothing to do with Michael Jackson at all. But you have to give these people credit for chutzpah: they have photos of Michael on their website, and write about him like they’re old friends.

What’s next? We can only imagine.

Just in case Michael Jackson’s fans are interested, there is currently no — I mean zero, none — charity officially sanctioned by his estate or left behind by him in his name.

It’s sort of amazing watching Shmuley Boteach, a rabbi with no congregation other than an unwitting public, selling out Michael Jackson. He’s just published a book of interviews he taped with Michael back in 2000-2001. All the money goes to Boteach. There’s no charity involved. (Ironically, Boteach also recently published a book called “The Blessing of Enough: Rejecting Material Greed, Embracing Spiritual Hunger.”)

That wasn’t the case in 2000 when I met both Michael and Boteach together one November night. It was at the home of PR guru Howard Rubenstein. Boteach had convinced Michael to start a new charity with him called Time for Kids. They were going to teach parents to spend time with their children.

There were about 3o people in the Rubensteins’ Fifth Avenue living room. Boteach gave a long speech about Michael being the “most misunderstood” celebrity in the world, said he loved children so much he had mannequins of them in his Neverland bedroom. That revelation went over like a lead balloon.

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Famed Mafia chronicler and true crime writer Phil Carlo wants Josh Hartnett to play the Night Stalker of Los Angeles, Richard Ramirez. Carlo’s famous book on the subject has already gone through 22 printings.

Carlo has other Hollywood news. Chris Cornell, lead singer of Soundgarden, and his producing partner (and bnrother in law) Nick Karaylannis have just optioned “The Night Stalker: The Life and Crimes of Richard Ramirez,”  from Carlo to turn it into a movie. Cornell is quite the Renaissance man: he and his wife Vicky, and Nick, own a Paris nightclub called “Black Calvados.”

Anyway, the real hero of this item is Phil Carlo. He was diagnosed with ALS in 2004, but that didn’t stop him from writing two more books. His new one, “The Butcher: Anatomy of  a Mafia Psychopath,” is released today by Harper Collins. Mickey Rourke, who attended Carlo’s book party last week at the Greenwich Hotel, will play the main character on screen.

Billy Joel’s had an up and down year, for sure: a hit concert tour with Elton John, but a much publicized divorce from his wife of four years, Katie Lee.

But now Billy’s ready to tell all, or at least some of it. He’s got a $3 million deal for an autobiography with HarperCollins. Veteran film and music writer Fred Schruers is working on it with him.

Billy has a great story to tell if he can put it all on paper. First, there’s all that colorful character stuff about growing up on Long Island and becoming a “piano man.”

But then: The marriage to first wife Elizabeth, for whom he wrote “Just the Way You Are.” Her brother, Frank, ripped Billy off for millions. Then Billy also went after famed music attorney Allen Grubman.

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Barbra Streisand, perhaps the greatest performer of her generation, made history last night for her fans as she returned to her Greenwich Village roots after almost 50 years.

As a promotional effort for her latest album, “Love is the Answer,” the eternally youthful looking Streisand brought a four-piece jazz band into the Village Vanguard, a downstairs club in the West Village where she got her start almost five decades ago. Among the guests were fans who’d won a lottery for the available 78 seats.

But the other fans were also pretty remarkable: former president Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with daughter Chelsea and her fiancee, actor James Brolin (Streisand’s husband), Sarah Jessica Parker, Nicole Kidman, Donna Karan, famed theater actress Phyllis Newman who is also the widow of Adolph Green, lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman, mogul Barry Diller (solo — wife Diane von Furstenberg was away, he told me), the New York Times’s Frank Rich and Alex Witchel, Deborah Lee Furness aka Mrs. Hugh Jackman, Columbia Records chief Rob Stringer, and longtime Hollywood manager Sandy Gallin.

The brilliant record producer Tommy LiPuma, who made “Love is the Answer” with Streisand and Diana Krall, was also there.

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Movie stars come and go on Broadway, most trying to revive careers or make a point. Some succeed (Jane Fonda), some don’t (Julia Roberts).

On Tuesday, Daniel Craig, best known for playing James Bond, and Hugh Jackman, aka Wolverine, make their official premiere in Keith Huff’s 90-minute two-hander called “A Steady Rain.” They are each at the height of their career, and need to prove nothing to no one. So you wonder, what is going on here?

On Friday night, the press got its first look at these two dipped-in-gold movie stars on stage. The Gerald Schoenfeld Theater was packed with media, as well as film director Joel Schumacher. The New York Times’s Ben Brantley was tenth row on the aisle. Outside on West 45th St., fans and autograph hounds were four deep against metal barriers. It doesn’t help that right next door, “God’s Carnage” has resumed performances with Marcia Gay Harden, Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis, and James Gandolfini.

Jackman, of course, has plenty of stage experience, mostly with musicals. He starred in “The Boy from Oz.” He commanded the Oscars this past year. Craig is more of an unknown quantity. We know him mostly from action films, although he did play poet Ted Hughes in “Sylvia,” and the lead in “Enduring Love.” Both guys are known for stripping off their shirts, not down to emotions.

So I have good news for all involved: Craig and Jackman are just terrific as two Chicago cops recounting their lifelong friendship, partnership, and their tragic undoing. Craig, in particular, is a revelation as Joey, the bachelor who has pined for his friend’s wife and life all these years. A heavy mustache seems to pull Craig’s face down, releasing a look of sorrow and guilt that seems to radiate into his hunched shoulders and through his suit.

Jackman is family man Denny, whose secret life is peeled back like layers of onion skin. Jackman is just as riveting, starting Denny out as a solid, good-time guy and steering him into dangerous territory.

Much more about the specifics of “A Steady Rain” I don’t want to say because the twists and turns of Huff’s plot are just enough to make the audience gasp more than a a few times. You should know that the actors make all this work sitting on padded metal chairs under individual overhead lights, with little of a set and no props to fall back on. It’s all them, with nowhere to hide.

What’s certain is that “Rain” will become a movie, likely with these two men, expanded to include the many characters described by Denny and Joey during the hour and a half. Sidney Lumet should direct it. In the meantime, how nice to have two movie stars so invested in their roles that you almost forget who they are while the curtain is up and the theater is dark. Almost.

A pop star fishes a 12-year-old boy out of the audience during his concert, runs around the stage with him, holds his hand, before returning him to his parents. Later, a group of volunteers holding candles fan out along the ramp encircling the stage.

Is it Michael Jackson? Sure sounds like it. No, it’s Bono. And the show was last night at Giants Stadium, where U2 put on an extravaganza that only Jackson and Liberace could have imagined.

This is U2’s 360 tour, the follow-up to last spring’s album release, “No Line on the Horizon.” Here’s the problem, which was unforeseen: “No Line” was not a hit, and yielded no singles except for the grating “Get on Your Boots.”  It was the first-ever mistake in the U2 catalog, and should have been rethought. Instead, “No Line” and its turgid, mostly tuneless songs was foisted on the public. Months later, they are still unsingable and unmemorable.

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