CAMPAIGNING FOR CAPED CRUSADER'S NEWEST ADVENTURE.

Byline: Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

The stars of ``Batman & Robin'' will be going out of their way - literally - to tub-thump for the picture.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Clooney, Chris O'Donnell, Alicia Silverstone and Uma Thurman leave on a whirlwind overseas tour with director Joel Schumacher the day after the film's June 12 premiere - making personal appearances on behalf of the Warner Bros. release throughout Europe, and in Hong Kong and Australia.

Schwarzenegger, who underwent surgery for replacement of a defective aortic valve last month, is very much up to the trip, says Schumacher. ``He phoned me today - he had just returned from a 4-1/2-mile hike. The day after the operation he was using an exercise bike in his hospital room. The surgeon walked in, saw what he was doing and almost had a heart attack. He's more like Superman than Batman.''

You can be sure Schwarzenegger - Mr. Freeze in the new Batman epic - is particularly looking forward to the overseas stop that's planned for his hometown of Graz, Austria, where a sports stadium will be dedicated in his honor, with his mother standing by.

Meanwhile, Schumacher is finishing what he describes as ``the fun part'' of post-production - the music. ``The cake is baked, this is the icing,'' he says. We'll get a sample of that icing today when MTV debuts the first ``Batman & Robin'' video, featuring Smashing Pumpkins doing the single from the sound track, ``The End Is the Beginning Is the End.''

What a swell party it was

If anyone doubts that the cyber world is Where the Money Is, how about this for a party of the Very Rich? Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen threw a shindig during the weekend for 300 of his closest friends - jetting them to Venice, Italy, from various parts of the globe. The friends included Robin Williams, Peter Gabriel, Quincy Jones, Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, David Geffen, Barry Diller, Geena Davis and Renny Harlin, and Sting and Trudie Styler. Fun activities around the city climaxed with a grand masquerade ball. Guests, decked out in lavish Renaissance costumes, were shuttled to the site of the ball by gondola and greeted by heraldic trumpeters. Among the notables who played music for the crowd of notables: Carlos Santana, Tom Scott, Vernon Reid - and Allen himself, playing guitar with Dave Stewart of Eurythmics fame.

The videoland view

Those who caught this week's installment of ``Chicago Hope'' saw Dr. Geiger (Mandy Patinkin) return, announcing he now owned a controlling interest in the medical facility - and Dr. Kate Austin (Christine Lahti) march out. Is that really the end of Lahti's career with the show? ``It's negotiation time, so I can't say definitely,'' says the actress. But she expects, she says, to be back, and for Patinkin, who left his co-starring ``Chicago Hope'' role in 1995, to merely ``pop in occasionally, as he's been doing.''

Right now, Christine is in Houston with Goldie Hawn, rehearsing ``Hope,'' the TNT TV film Goldie will start directing next month. Lahti won a 1996 Oscar for her directorial debut with the short film ``Lieberman in Love,'' and says that for ``five minutes'' she was hoping she would get to direct as well as act in ``Hope.'' ``David Anspach was supposed to direct, but he fell out,'' she says. Lahti notes that it was Hawn who developed and is producing the drama about a teen-age girl who stands up to her bigoted neighbors when she tells the truth about a black boy's death, ``and Goldie decided she wanted it to be her first directorial effort.''

Oops

The all-star remake of ``12 Angry Men'' we referred to the other day is a Showtime movie, not HBO.

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Photo

Photo: Arnold Schwarzenegger

Visiting Austria