TIBETAN MISSION

I was very interested in your “Seven Years in Tibet” article (“It Must Be Karma, by Laurence B. Chollet, Feb. 9), as I also made a film about the Dalai Lama and Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer.

The difference in the films is that I used the 14-year-old Dalai Lama as the Dalai Lama and Harrer as Harrer. In addition, all of the temples, thousands of Buddhist monks and the actual Potala were my backdrops--all without Central Casting or a budget.

My film, made in 1949, is a short documentary made during a trip to Lhasa. The plan, a “Mission: Impossible” initiated by Harrer and my boss, Claire Chennault, was an attempt to fly the Dalai Lama out of China before the communists reached the holy city. The problem was that we had to get to Lhasa, build a light-plane runway, fly in and take the principal parties out of Lhasa without the communists’ knowledge.

Instead of taking the monthlong trip by camel from China to Lhasa, we put a jeep in a C-46 cargo plane along with many drums of gasoline for the aircraft and the jeep. The aircraft was flown to an abandoned Chinese Nationalist Air Force strip at the base of the mountains, and then we drove the jeep, a first, to Lhasa.

The Dalai Lama carved an airport out of his mountaintop city in two weeks, using thousands of laborers. We then attempted to fly-in a Cessna 190, which had a 300-horsepower high-altitude engine, but it was shot down before it reached Tibet and we were told by the communists to stay out of Tibet. The Dalai Lama did not leave Lhasa until 10 years later.

I have shown the film, now enhanced and on tape, to the Dalai Lama, and I would like to show it to director Jean-Jacques Annaud and his star Brad Pitt, and to “Kundun” director Martin Scorsese. They should see the principals and the area that they are trying to duplicate, as 90% of Lhasa’s holy areas have been destroyed by the communists.

F.G. (BOB) GORMAN

Lomita