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<\/p>\nNEWBERRY SPRINGS, Calif. \u00a0\u2014\u00a0Four decades ago, the cult hit \u201cBagdad Cafe\u201d was filmed at a ramshackle diner in the Mojave Desert.<\/p>\n
The tale of two women in the lonely landscape \u2014 a hardworking, rifle-wielding cafe owner and a stranded German tourist with a suitcase full of lederhosen \u2014 captivated viewers, particularly in Europe and Japan. <\/p>\n
Busloads of international tourists rolled up to the actual Bagdad Cafe on a cracked, sunbaked stretch of Route 66. <\/p>\n
Real-life proprietor Andrea Pruett, a sweet but steely Southerner who kept her own gun behind the counter, greeted them in French and German, then fed them buffalo burgers and omelets. <\/p>\n
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A memorial announcement for owner Andrea Pruett is seen at the Bagdad Cafe on Route 66 in the Mojave Desert.<\/p>\n
As Pruett aged, her grip on reality loosened. But she refused to leave.<\/p>\n
Now, the Bagdad Cafe is in limbo. Though T-shirts and tchotchkes are still for sale, the kitchen is closed. And Pruett\u2019s family is figuring out what comes next.<\/p>\n
Buses full of Europeans still come. So, too, do the roadtrippers celebrating Route 66, which turns 100 this year<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t get any locals, and we don\u2019t cook any food right now,\u201d said Mark Bradley, the cafe\u2019s gruff but genial manager. \u201cBut we\u2019re definitely on the map to see … it\u2019s magic that takes place here.\u201d<\/p>\n The cafe is a cacophony of color in an expanse of desert brown. Flags from all over \u2014 France, Brazil, Japan, New Zealand, Canada \u2014 hang from low ceilings. The walls are covered floor to ceiling by visitors\u2019 passport photos and dollar bills with Sharpie signatures. \u201cWe\u2019ve been here three times!\u201d an Italian visitor raved in a guest book. <\/p>\n Pruett is still there, too. An urn holding her ashes sits by the front door. <\/p>\n A drone image shows the remote Bagdad Cafe on Route 66 in Newberry Springs.<\/p>\n In 1995, eight years after the movie\u2019s European premiere, Pruett and her husband, Harold, stopped for burgers at what was then called the Sidewinder Cafe in Newberry Springs<\/a>, 20 miles east of Barstow. They had just bought 640 acres for an ostrich ranch, which ultimately didn\u2019t work out, though they kept some of the birds as pets. <\/p>\n The owner told them the A-frame, wood-shingled diner was for sale. \u201cMy husband looked at me and I said, \u2018Don\u2019t even think about it,\u2019 \u201d Pruett told The Times<\/a> in 2003.<\/p>\n But their son, actor<\/a> Harold P. Pruett II \u2014 who was 26 and starring that year in a campy erotic horror flick called \u201cEmbrace of the Vampire\u201d \u2014 declared the cafe \u201ccool,\u201d and that was that. <\/p>\n The Pruetts promptly rechristened it Bagdad Cafe, following German filmmaker Percy Adlon\u2019s lead<\/a>. <\/p>\n The exterior of the Bagdad Cafe.<\/p>\n Nearby Bagdad was a railroad town named<\/a> in the 1880s by Southern Pacific Railroad officials after the Middle Eastern metropolis \u2014 without the H \u2014 because of the desert terrain.<\/p>\n Bagdad became a stop for steam-powered trains whose engines needed more water every eight miles or so in the desert climate, said Scott Piotrowski, past president of the California Historic Route 66 Assn. <\/p>\n The bustling little town was also a hub for gold, silver and copper mining camps.<\/p>\n Mining eventually faded, but cars on Route 66 overheated easily and often limped into town for water. A restaurant named, naturally, Bagdad Cafe, owned by a woman named Alice Lawrence<\/a>, was the only place for miles with a dance floor and jukebox. <\/p>\n When Interstate 40 opened in 1972 about 10 miles north \u2014 taking most traffic and tourists away from Route 66 \u2014 it was the death knell for Bagdad, where all that remains today is a single scruffy cedar tree.<\/a> <\/p>\n Thierry Farion, left, from France, and Aziz Khechine, right, from Tunisia, look at memorabilia inside the Bagdad Cafe.<\/p>\n At Pruett\u2019s Bagdad Cafe, she embraced the movie. The two female characters, initially wary of each other, are both on a hiatus from their husbands, and the German tourist eventually draws big crowds by performing magic tricks.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen people came in, it was like a director saying, \u2018Action!\u2019 \u201d said Pruett\u2019s grandson, Greg Landers, 47, of Glassell Park. \u201cShe would just go right into welcoming people and telling them to sit down, answering their questions.\u201d<\/p>\n A petite bottle-blonde who spoke with the laid-back drawl of her native Arkansas, Pruett showed off memorabilia signed by the \u201cBagdad Cafe\u201d director. She got a yellow thermos like the one in the film, which, miraculously, never seems to run out of java, even when the coffee pot is busted. <\/p>\n A guest book displays messages at the Bagdad Cafe.<\/p>\n She kept the jukebox on the movie\u2019s Academy Award-nominated theme song, \u201cCalling You,\u201d recorded by R&B singer Jevetta Steele<\/a> and covered by Celine Dion<\/a>, Barbra Streisand<\/a>, George Michael<\/a> and others. <\/p>\n The lyrics immortalized the Bagdad: <\/p>\n A desert road from Vegas to nowhere Pruett\u2019s place drew desert eccentrics, including a gravelly-voiced man dubbed General Bob who sniped at customers who doubted his claims that he designed the Pentagon, built the Golden Gate Bridge, was a brain surgeon and was 109. (\u201cActually, he\u2019s 83 years old, and if he wants to be older, I let him,\u201d Pruett told NPR<\/a> in 2003.) <\/p>\n Monaco\u2019s Prince Albert II stopped in once. So did actress Ren\u00e9e Zellweger, who told Jay Leno<\/a> on \u201cThe Tonight Show\u201d that there was a \u201clittle old guy, he\u2019s been sitting there for, I think, maybe 45 years on the same barstool. We had chicken fried steak together.\u201d <\/p>\n When Huell Howser popped in<\/a> unannounced for a 2001 episode<\/a> of his California road trip show, General Bob, perched at the bar with a fedora atop his long silver hair, proclaimed he was 98 years old and \u201ca real general, not a f\u2014up.\u201d <\/p>\n Marian Box, left, works the counter and talks to visitor Jaelene Kleckner.<\/p>\n For all the joy, desert life brought plenty of hardship<\/a>. <\/p>\n One night in the 1990s, not long after Pruett bought the place, she was closing out the cash register when a man walked in, slammed a wooden 2-by-4 on the counter and ordered her to put all the money in a bag.<\/p>\n \u201cShe actually had a shotgun under the counter, and she pulled it out and said, \u2018Stop,\u2019 and cocked it,\u201d said Landers, her grandson.<\/p>\n The man threw his hands up and said his family was in the car. They had been traveling and ran out of money. Pruett ushered them inside, fed them and sent them away with some cash \u2014 after making them wash their own dishes. <\/p>\n Pruett, who gave birth to Landers\u2019 father, Corky, at 15, had a tough and impoverished youth. But she was \u201ckind almost to a fault,\u201d said Landers, a contractor who lived with her for a spell in his 20s and worked in the cafe. People who just about everyone else had given up on \u2014 she\u2019d give them a place to stay and work to do. <\/p>\n In February 2002, the younger of Pruett\u2019s two sons, Harold the actor, died of an accidental drug overdose<\/a>. Her husband died two months later. <\/p>\n Pruett\u2019s love for her customers kept her going, said Bradley, who has been around the cafe for 26 years as a frequent visitor and employee. <\/p>\n \u201cShe would have them crying as they left, but happy crying,\u201d he said. \u201cShe could do that to people by giving them a hug and in just the few minutes that they were here. She had a magic to her.\u201d <\/p>\n In 2016, Sarah Jane Woodall \u2014 a former nude model who posts popular desert travelogues on YouTube under the moniker Wonderhussy \u2014 stopped for breakfast and shot a video.<\/a> <\/p>\n The cafe was quiet and grimy. She loved it. <\/p>\n \u201cIt was just, like, a lovable hot mess,\u201d said Woodall, an Army kid who lived for a time in Germany, where people were obsessed with the movie.<\/p>\n The COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns devastated the Bagdad Cafe \u2014 and Pruett, who turned 80 in the summer of 2020. <\/p>\n The Europeans disappeared. Vandals busted the windows. Pruett let go of her waiters. Her kitchen closed and never reopened.<\/p>\n A sign for a former motel next to the Bagdad Cafe on Route 66 in Newberry Springs. <\/p>\n In 2021, her house burned down. She slept in the cafe, her thin frame curled up in a red vinyl booth. <\/p>\n That summer, L\u00e9a De Carmo, an aspiring actress, was driving back to Los Angeles from Las Vegas with a friend and, after a night of partying, craved a cup of coffee. They pulled into the Bagdad Cafe, where \u2014 as in the movie \u2014 the coffee pot was broken.<\/p>\n De Carmo, a native of Paris who had never seen the film, was stunned when she opened the door and \u201csaw French flags and soccer team stuff everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt seems like all the French are led there for one reason or another,\u201d said De Carmo, 29, who talked to Pruett that day for over two hours. <\/p>\n \u201cShe had essentially lost everything \u2014 her business, her house \u2014 but she just had this incredible energy and warmth and humor,\u201d De Carmo said. \u201cThere was also this very deep loneliness.\u201d <\/p>\n For the next four years, De Carmo drove from L.A. to Newberry Springs dozens of times, filming Pruett for a just-finished documentary<\/a> called \u201cThe Keeper of Bagdad Cafe,\u201d about her final years in the crumbling diner.<\/p>\n In the film, friends help Pruett move into an RV in the parking lot. As a woman gently washes her white hair with bottled water behind the cafe counter, Pruett says she can\u2019t remember where she\u2019s from. <\/p>\n \u201cOne thing she never forgot was the cafe,\u201d De Carmo said. \u201cShe always knew where she was and that it was the place she wanted to be.\u201d <\/p>\n Landers said his father, who died in 2022, asked her to move in with him in L.A., but she didn\u2019t want to leave the Bagdad.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was just hard,\u201d said Landers, who added that she might have fared better, physically, at least, in a dementia care facility. But she repeatedly said, \u201cNo, this is my place. This is where I want to be.\u201d <\/p>\n Pruett\u2019s friends in the desert stepped up. Bradley took care of her and the cafe, opening it each day for tourists to come in and take photos. <\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1790081548_523_.jpeg\")
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Some place better than where you\u2019ve been
A coffee machine that needs some fixing
In a little caf\u00e9 just around the bend<\/p>\n![\"Marian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1790081549_307_.jpeg\")
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