NEWBERRY SPRINGS, Calif. — Four decades ago, the cult hit “Bagdad Cafe” was filmed at a ramshackle diner in the Mojave Desert.
The tale of two women in the lonely landscape — a hardworking, rifle-wielding cafe owner and a stranded German tourist with a suitcase full of lederhosen — captivated viewers, particularly in Europe and Japan.
Busloads of international tourists rolled up to the actual Bagdad Cafe on a cracked, sunbaked stretch of Route 66.
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.
A memorial announcement for owner Andrea Pruett is seen at the Bagdad Cafe on Route 66 in the Mojave Desert.
As Pruett aged, her grip on reality loosened. But she refused to leave.
Now, the Bagdad Cafe is in limbo. Though T-shirts and tchotchkes are still for sale, the kitchen is closed. And Pruett’s family is figuring out what comes next.
Buses full of Europeans still come. So, too, do the roadtrippers celebrating Route 66, which turns 100 this year.
“We don’t get any locals, and we don’t cook any food right now,” said Mark Bradley, the cafe’s gruff but genial manager. “But we’re definitely on the map to see … it’s magic that takes place here.”
The cafe is a cacophony of color in an expanse of desert brown. Flags from all over — France, Brazil, Japan, New Zealand, Canada — hang from low ceilings. The walls are covered floor to ceiling by visitors’ passport photos and dollar bills with Sharpie signatures. “We’ve been here three times!” an Italian visitor raved in a guest book.
Pruett is still there, too. An urn holding her ashes sits by the front door.
A drone image shows the remote Bagdad Cafe on Route 66 in Newberry Springs.
In 1995, eight years after the movie’s European premiere, Pruett and her husband, Harold, stopped for burgers at what was then called the Sidewinder Cafe in Newberry Springs, 20 miles east of Barstow. They had just bought 640 acres for an ostrich ranch, which ultimately didn’t work out, though they kept some of the birds as pets.
The owner told them the A-frame, wood-shingled diner was for sale. “My husband looked at me and I said, ‘Don’t even think about it,’ ” Pruett told The Times in 2003.
But their son, actor Harold P. Pruett II — who was 26 and starring that year in a campy erotic horror flick called “Embrace of the Vampire” — declared the cafe “cool,” and that was that.
The Pruetts promptly rechristened it Bagdad Cafe, following German filmmaker Percy Adlon’s lead.
The exterior of the Bagdad Cafe.
Nearby Bagdad was a railroad town named in the 1880s by Southern Pacific Railroad officials after the Middle Eastern metropolis — without the H — because of the desert terrain.
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.
The bustling little town was also a hub for gold, silver and copper mining camps.
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, was the only place for miles with a dance floor and jukebox.
When Interstate 40 opened in 1972 about 10 miles north — taking most traffic and tourists away from Route 66 — it was the death knell for Bagdad, where all that remains today is a single scruffy cedar tree.
Thierry Farion, left, from France, and Aziz Khechine, right, from Tunisia, look at memorabilia inside the Bagdad Cafe.
At Pruett’s 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.
“When people came in, it was like a director saying, ‘Action!’ ” said Pruett’s grandson, Greg Landers, 47, of Glassell Park. “She would just go right into welcoming people and telling them to sit down, answering their questions.”
A petite bottle-blonde who spoke with the laid-back drawl of her native Arkansas, Pruett showed off memorabilia signed by the “Bagdad Cafe” 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.
A guest book displays messages at the Bagdad Cafe.
A desert road from Vegas to nowhere Some place better than where you’ve been A coffee machine that needs some fixing In a little café just around the bend
Pruett’s 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. (“Actually, he’s 83 years old, and if he wants to be older, I let him,” Pruett told NPR in 2003.)
Monaco’s Prince Albert II stopped in once. So did actress Renée Zellweger, who told Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show” that there was a “little old guy, he’s been sitting there for, I think, maybe 45 years on the same barstool. We had chicken fried steak together.”
When Huell Howser popped in unannounced for a 2001 episode 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 “a real general, not a f—up.”
Marian Box, left, works the counter and talks to visitor Jaelene Kleckner.
For all the joy, desert life brought plenty of hardship.
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.
“She actually had a shotgun under the counter, and she pulled it out and said, ‘Stop,’ and cocked it,” said Landers, her grandson.
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 — after making them wash their own dishes.
Pruett, who gave birth to Landers’ father, Corky, at 15, had a tough and impoverished youth. But she was “kind almost to a fault,” 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 — she’d give them a place to stay and work to do.
In February 2002, the younger of Pruett’s two sons, Harold the actor, died of an accidental drug overdose. Her husband died two months later.
Pruett’s love for her customers kept her going, said Bradley, who has been around the cafe for 26 years as a frequent visitor and employee.
“She would have them crying as they left, but happy crying,” he said. “She 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.”
In 2016, Sarah Jane Woodall — a former nude model who posts popular desert travelogues on YouTube under the moniker Wonderhussy — stopped for breakfast and shot a video.
The cafe was quiet and grimy. She loved it.
“It was just, like, a lovable hot mess,” said Woodall, an Army kid who lived for a time in Germany, where people were obsessed with the movie.
The COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns devastated the Bagdad Cafe — and Pruett, who turned 80 in the summer of 2020.
The Europeans disappeared. Vandals busted the windows. Pruett let go of her waiters. Her kitchen closed and never reopened.
A sign for a former motel next to the Bagdad Cafe on Route 66 in Newberry Springs.
In 2021, her house burned down. She slept in the cafe, her thin frame curled up in a red vinyl booth.
That summer, Léa 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 — as in the movie — the coffee pot was broken.
De Carmo, a native of Paris who had never seen the film, was stunned when she opened the door and “saw French flags and soccer team stuff everywhere.”
“It seems like all the French are led there for one reason or another,” said De Carmo, 29, who talked to Pruett that day for over two hours.
“She had essentially lost everything — her business, her house — but she just had this incredible energy and warmth and humor,” De Carmo said. “There was also this very deep loneliness.”
For the next four years, De Carmo drove from L.A. to Newberry Springs dozens of times, filming Pruett for a just-finished documentary called “The Keeper of Bagdad Cafe,” about her final years in the crumbling diner.
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’t remember where she’s from.
“One thing she never forgot was the cafe,” De Carmo said. “She always knew where she was and that it was the place she wanted to be.”
Landers said his father, who died in 2022, asked her to move in with him in L.A., but she didn’t want to leave the Bagdad.
“It was just hard,” said Landers, who added that she might have fared better, physically, at least, in a dementia care facility. But she repeatedly said, “No, this is my place. This is where I want to be.”
Pruett’s 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.
Woodall returned at the cafe’s request, filming the stained, decaying ceiling and the water-catching buckets and coffee pots on the floor. The YouTuber’s fans raised more than $25,000 — enough for a new roof.
In the video, Pruett stood by, smiling, quiet, a little confused.
For the next three years, she stayed at the Bagdad, even as her memory continued to fade. She died this January at 85.
On a Friday morning this summer, with the outside temperature already 115 degrees, Matt Parker stood behind the worn green Formica counter, setting a smart TV to the movie and preparing to make Nescafé instant coffee — a favorite of Europeans.
On a good day, they get three tour buses, he said.
Parker, 53, moved from L.A. County to Newberry Springs — where he used to camp with his dad and ride dirt bikes as a kid — a few years ago and fell in love with the cafe.
“You can’t recreate this,” he said. “We’re just caretakers of it. It’s a museum and church, in a sense, with all this stuff. Mrs. Pruett really focused on protecting it, protecting these people’s stuff — their mark.”
Andrea Pruett’s urn near the entrance of the Bagdad Cafe, which she ran for three decades.She died in January.
Landers said that, while the family figures out what to do with the cafe, he asked Bradley to keep it open like his grandma did.
Though her urn remains in the place she loved most, Landers hopes, someday, to bury her ashes in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery next to her youngest son.
Since her death, he can’t help but think of a scene from the movie. The German woman — forced to leave after her tourist visa expires — is gone and the bustling restaurant quiet again. A customer walks in and asks where the magic shows went.
A snoozing employee sits up and says: “The magic? It’s gone.”
In the end, the German returns to the Bagdad Cafe. And so do the crowds.
Many true crime fans said it was a ‘wild’ watch as they tune in for the first time
The documentary can be streamed on Netflix(Image: NETFLIX)
An “insane” true crime documentary available to stream online is guaranteed to have your jaw on the floor.
There is an abundance of documentaries and films to watch on Netflix, but there is one particular watch that viewers say did not get “enough recognition” when it was first released.
Premiering in 2019, Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator examines the dramatic rise and fall of the controversial founder of hot yoga, Bikram Choudhury.
Directed by Academy Award winner Eva Orner (Taxi to the Dark Side), the film details how the controversial founder built a global fitness empire before it collapsed following numerous sexual abuse allegations.
An official synopsis on Netflix reads: “Arriving in Beverly Hills from Calcutta, India in the early 1970s, Choudhury quickly cultivated a celebrity following and built a global fitness empire that furnished him with extreme wealth.
“But by the 2010s, as numerous sexual abuse allegations emerged and stories of his aggressive, cult-like training environment surfaced, the lawsuits started to mount and Choudhury’s unorthodox teaching style became front-page news.”
It later adds: “BIKRAM: YOGI, GURU, PREDATOR, a Netflix original documentary, shines a light on the stories of the women who took him down and explores the contradiction of how this healing discipline could simultaneously help and hurt so many.”
Recently, one true crime reviewer took to social media having recently watched the documentary film, as they branded it an “insane” watch.
Sharing a video explaining the synopsis of the documentary, they wrote: “This true crime documentary will have your jaw on the ground.”
In the clip, they added: “This insane true crime documentary didn’t get enough recognition when it first came out.” One person replied: “Ohhh I loved this one crazzzyyyy”, as another commented: “Yes this was WILD!!!!”
A third added: “There’s a podcast about this too. Very strange, weird story.” A fourth wrote: “Oh yea this was a good one lol.”A fifth said: “That was a b***** crazy doc!! Too cray cray!!” Another stated: “I saw this already and I screamed at that ***!!! Absolutely insane!!”
Over on IMDb, one reviewer previously said: “The documentary was impeccably put together and a must watch for any yogi.”
Another wrote: “‘Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator’ is an exceptionally well made and well constructed documentary. It’s also one that, by the end, will probably also make you very angry for a variety of reasons.”
Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator can be streamed on Netflix
Olympic gold medalist Jordan Chiles announced her intention to train for the L.A. Olympics on Wednesday, publicly beginning her attempt for a third Olympic Games in a video narrated by NBA legend Michael Jordan.
“Why again?” says Jordan, whom Chiles is named after. “Because the dream is still there.”
Chiles helped the United States to a team gold medal in 2024, competing in all four events in the final. She won her first individual Olympic medal, a bronze on floor with her energetic Beyoncé-inspired routine, but that result still is being considered by the Court of Arbitration for Sport after controversy involving the inquiry process that led to Chiles’ score being upgraded to overtake Romania’s Ana Barbosu.
Chiles is the fourth member of that gold medal-winning team to announce a comeback for the 2028 Olympics, joining Suni Lee, Jade Carey and Hezly Rivera. Simone Biles, the 29-year-old, 11-time Olympic medalist, has not officially come out of retirement.
Before Biles, a U.S. female gymnast had not competed in three Olympic Games in 24 years. Dominique Dawes, who competed in her third Olympics in 2000, Linda Metheny and Muriel Grossfield are the only other American women to accomplish the feat. But in a sport no longer dominated by teenage one-hit wonders, there will be three women vying to join the exclusive triple Olympian club in 2028.
Chiles used college experience to help raise her game after winning a team silver in her first Olympic experience in Tokyo, and after returning from Paris with gold, she finished a standout college career at UCLA. The 23-time All-American won her second and third individual NCAA titles, on bars last year and floor this year, and won the AAI Award, which goes to the top senior gymnast in the nation. She had 19 perfect 10s in her college career, which ranks third in UCLA history. On Tuesday, UCLA announced Chiles would return to the team as a student coach.
“Jordan has made an incredible impact on our program over the years,” UCLA gymnastics coach Janelle McDonald said in a statement. “I’m excited to watch her continue that influence in a new capacity as she steps into this next chapter with student coaching. Her energy, passion, leadership and gymnastics experience will make a unique and positive impact on our team this coming year!”
Outside of the gym, Chiles has capitalized on her Olympic stardom. She was a finalist on “Dancing with the Stars” and authored a memoir, “I’m That Girl: Living the Power of my Dreams.” She was named to Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in sports this year and has been a ubiquitous presence on red carpets and at major sporting events and galas.
With her post-gymnastics life rolling, Chiles still is choosing to return to training with less than two years remaining until the 2028 Games.
“When the world asks why she’s back for a third time,” Jordan says in Chiles’ announcement video, “the answer’s simple.”
