“Calling You” — From the Mojave Desert to the World

There is a desert road from Vegas to nowhere — or so the song begins. “Calling You,” written by Bob Telson and performed by Jevetta Steele, opens with those words before describing a coffee machine that needs fixing, a little café just around the bend. The song was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1989. The film it belongs to — Bagdad Café, directed by German filmmaker Percy Adlon and released in 1987 — became a cult classic that most Americans have never seen and that millions of Europeans, particularly the French and the Germans, hold in something approaching reverence. And the café itself — the real building on Historic U.S. Route 66 in Newberry Springs, California, where Adlon’s crew filmed the movie in the spring of 1987 — has become one of the most visited roadside stops on California’s Route 66 corridor, drawing international pilgrims by the busload every year, mostly from France and Germany, to stand inside the walls where the film was made and understand, firsthand, what drew a German director to a crumbling Mojave Desert truck stop in the first place.

The Bagdad Café — the building, not the movie — is located at 46548 National Trails Highway, Newberry Springs, California 92365, on the old Route 66 alignment between Barstow and Ludlow. It opened in 1975 as the Sidewinder Cafe, served travelers on the desert highway for more than a decade, was filmed in by a German director in 1987, and has borne the name Bagdad Café since 1995 when its new owners embraced the film’s legacy as the building’s defining identity. The interior — covered floor to ceiling in flags from countries around the world, stickers, notes, guestbook pages, snapshots of the cast and crew, and decades of international visitor memorabilia — is unlike the interior of any other building on Route 66 and unlike almost any other building in the United States.

In January 2026, the Route 66 community mourned the passing of Andrea Pruett, who had owned and stewarded the Bagdad Café since 1994 — more than 30 years of welcoming the world to a converted truck stop in the Mojave Desert. The Pruett family has confirmed that the Bagdad Café will continue to operate in her memory, at a landmark moment: the Route 66 Centennial in 2026, the 100th anniversary of the highway that made the café possible in the first place.

Where Is the Bagdad Café?

The Bagdad Café is located at 46548 National Trails Highway (Historic Route 66), Newberry Springs, California 92365. Phone: (760) 257-3101. The café sits on the north side of the National Trails Highway (the old Route 66 alignment), roughly midway between Barstow to the west and Ludlow to the east, in the eastern Mojave Desert of San Bernardino County.

From Interstate 40, the most direct approach is via the Newberry Springs exit (Exit 50), heading south on Crucero Road to the National Trails Highway, then turning right (west) toward Newberry Springs. The café is on the right side of the highway, easily identifiable by the old Henning Motel sign that still stands in the parking area — the motel itself was demolished around 2015, but the vintage sign remains as a companion landmark. Alternatively, from the west, take I-40 to the Barstow Road exit (Highway 247), drive north to Route 66’s Main Street in Barstow, then follow Route 66 east through Lenwood and out into the Mojave. The café is approximately 30 miles east of Barstow and about 20 miles west of Ludlow.

The Building’s History: From Sidewinder Café to Bagdad

Newberry Springs: A Route 66 Desert Town

Newberry Springs’ history is older than Route 66 itself. The Santa Fe Railroad arrived here in 1885, and the site — then called simply “Water” — was established as a water supply station for steam locomotives crossing the Mojave. The town’s abundant water supply made it a genuine oasis in the desert, and the arrival of Route 66 in 1926 amplified its role as a rest stop for travelers making the long crossing between Barstow and Needles.

At its peak in the 1950s, Newberry Springs supported five gas stations, four motels, four garages, five cafes, three bars, a grocery store, a general store, and a public swimming pool — a remarkable density of services for a small desert community, sustained entirely by the flow of Route 66 traffic. The town was also known for its chicken farming; Walter Knott of Knott’s Berry Farm contracted with local farmers to supply chickens for his famous restaurant in Buena Park. When Interstate 40 bypassed Route 66 through Newberry Springs in 1973, the same pattern that destroyed Amboy and dozens of other small Mojave towns played out here: through traffic vanished, businesses closed, and the town contracted to a fraction of its Route 66-era size.

The Sidewinder Cafe: 1975–1987

The building at 46548 National Trails Highway opened in 1975 as the Sidewinder Cafe — a roadside café and truck stop serving the highway traffic that remained on the old Route 66 alignment after the interstate bypass. This was not a glamorous establishment. It was a functional desert truck stop: plain exterior, basic interior, serving the needs of locals, truckers, and the occasional traveler who had wandered off the freeway. It was the kind of place that existed by the hundreds along old U.S. highways — quiet, hardworking, and utterly unremarkable from the outside.

That changed in 1987, when a German film crew arrived in the Mojave Desert and chose the Sidewinder Cafe as their primary filming location. The choice transformed the building’s identity permanently.

The Film Arrives: 1987

Percy Adlon and his wife and producer Eleanor Adlon had taken a road trip along Route 66 in 1984 — actually in 1985, according to the American Film Institute’s production notes — traveling from Los Angeles and hoping to visit the real town of Bagdad, California, which they had spotted on a map. The town, 50 miles east of Newberry Springs on the old Route 66 alignment, had been bypassed by Interstate 40 in 1973 and was effectively abandoned. Adlon was told the town no longer existed. He was, as he later described it, captivated by “the idea of a place not existing any more, but still being on the map” — and that philosophical premise became the foundation of a screenplay.

For the physical location of the film, the Adlons chose the Sidewinder Cafe in Newberry Springs and the adjacent Henning Motel next door. Principal photography began in March 1987. The production budget was approximately $2 million. The film was shot in sequence — unusually for a film production, but consistent with Adlon’s improvisational, character-driven approach to the material. The Adlons shot the exterior and interior of the Sidewinder Cafe, used the Henning Motel for the film’s motel scenes, and used the surrounding Mojave Desert landscape as the film’s canvas.

After filming was complete, the building returned to its identity as the Sidewinder Cafe. The sister of one of the owners noted in a later online comment that the cafe closed in 1991 due to family illness. When it reopened under new ownership in the mid-1990s, the transformation to Bagdad Café was complete.

Andrea Pruett and the Bagdad Café Era: 1994–2026

In 1994, Andrea Pruett purchased the former Sidewinder Cafe, having become enthralled by the 1987 film. The following year — 1995 — she officially changed the name to the Bagdad Café, honoring both the movie and the ghost town that had inspired its title. The decision proved prescient: the film’s massive European audience, particularly in France and Germany, had already established a pattern of pilgrimage to the filming location, and Pruett’s renaming formalized the building’s new identity as a cinematic destination rather than simply a desert truck stop.

Under Andrea Pruett’s more than 30 years of stewardship, the Bagdad Café became one of the most distinctive establishments on the entire Route 66 corridor — not for its food or its architecture, but for its accumulated international character: the flags of dozens of nations hanging from the ceiling, stickers covering every surface, guestbook pages overflow with entries in French, German, English, Spanish, Japanese, and dozens of other languages, and photographs and memorabilia from the cast and crew of the film displayed on the walls. The café was described at various points as a place whose visitors were 75 percent French, with another 20 percent from other European and international nations — and only five percent American.

Pruett faced significant challenges in her later years of ownership. Vandalism, storm damage, the COVID-19 pandemic, and a fire that destroyed her home all took their toll. The café had ceased serving full meals and was operating as a souvenir shop and light beverage destination in its final years of her stewardship. Pruett’s health declined, and she passed away on January 13, 2026, at the age of 85. Her grandson Greg Landers described her as someone whose heart and soul she had put into the café for 32 years, making it truly special, and who persists in spirit in the very walls and bones of the structure. The Pruett family confirmed that the Bagdad Café will continue to operate as a tribute to her legacy and in time for the Route 66 Centennial year.

The 1987 Film: Out of Rosenheim / Bagdad Café

The Director and the Concept

Percy Adlon (born 1935) was a German television and film director who had made his reputation in Germany before arriving in the United States with an idea born from a desert road trip. Bagdad Café was his first English-language production. The script — written by Percy and Eleanor Adlon — was loosely inspired by Carson McCullers’ 1951 novella The Ballad of the Sad Café, a work similarly concerned with a remote, eccentric outpost that is transformed by the arrival of an outsider. But the Adlons’ film was fundamentally their own creation, shaped by their experience of America as European observers: its vastness, its loneliness, its capacity for magical transformation, and the specific quality of the Mojave Desert as a landscape that seemed to exist outside ordinary time.

The working title was Out of Rosenheim — the name under which the film was released in Germany, where it remains known to this day. (Rosenheim is the Bavarian city from which the film’s central character, Jasmin, comes.) The American title, Bagdad Café, references the location: the fictional café named for the real ghost town 50 miles east on Route 66. Adlon noted that the name Bagdad captured the sense of a place that had once existed but was now more mythological than real — an ideal framing for a film about transformation and belonging.

The Plot

The film opens with Jasmin Münchgstettner (played by German actress Marianne Sägebrecht), a stout, immaculately dressed Bavarian woman, having an argument with her husband at a desert rest stop in the American Southwest. She storms away on foot, taking a suitcase that turns out to contain her husband’s belongings — including a kit for learning magic tricks. She walks to the nearest outpost of civilization: the Bagdad Gas & Oil, a run-down service station, café, and motel complex.

The café is run by Brenda (played by American actress CCH Pounder), a tough, exasperated woman who has just thrown her own husband out and is struggling to keep the business afloat while raising her children. Brenda is immediately suspicious of the strange German woman. But Jasmin, who speaks little English and is completely out of place in the Mojave Desert, begins quietly transforming the café: cleaning, organizing, and eventually revealing herself as an accomplished magician. As Jasmin’s performances attract a crowd and the café begins to come alive, an unlikely friendship develops between the two very different women.

The ensemble includes Jack Palance as Rudi Cox, a former Hollywood scenic artist who lives at the motel and becomes enchanted by Jasmin, spending his days painting her portrait. Rudi is a man of faded ambitions and present-tense melancholy — one of Palance’s finest performances, quiet and specific in a way his more thunderous roles rarely allowed. Other characters include Brenda’s Bach-obsessed son, her promiscuous teenage daughter, and a rotating cast of desert eccentrics who orbit the café.

The film’s structure is deliberately loose and episodic. As critic Roger Ebert wrote in his 3.5-out-of-4-star review: “The charm of ‘Bagdad Cafe’ is that every character and every moment is unanticipated, obscurely motivated, of uncertain meaning and vibrating with life.” Ebert also observed that Adlon was saying something about “Europe and America, about the old and the new, about the edge of the desert as the edge of the American Dream.” The film does not explain itself or its characters; it trusts the viewer to meet them where they are.

“Calling You”: The Song and the Oscar Nomination

The film’s emotional center is not a scene but a song: “Calling You,” written by Bob Telson and performed by Jevetta Steele. The song recurs throughout the film as a haunting refrain — a voice from the desert road, addressing an unnamed other from a café that the lyrics describe with precise, imagistic detail: “A desert road from Vegas to nowhere / Someplace better than where you’ve been / A coffee machine that needs some fixing / In a little café just around the bend.” The song was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 61st Academy Awards (1989), bringing the film to the attention of American audiences who might otherwise have missed it entirely. Visitors to the real café in Newberry Springs frequently arrive humming the melody, and the song plays inside the building as a constant soundtrack to the international pilgrimage that the film inspired.

Critical Reception, Audience Response, and the Television Series

The film premiered on November 12, 1987, in Germany, and opened in the United States in April 1988 in limited release. American audiences largely ignored it; the $2 million production grossed approximately $3.59 million in the U.S. at the time — modest by Hollywood standards but exceptional for a foreign-language indie. In Europe, particularly in France and Germany, the film found a massive and devoted audience that has endured to the present day.

The film holds an 85% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and won the Best Foreign Language Film at the 23rd Guldbagge Awards (1988) and the Bavarian Film Award for Best Screenplay. The film’s success inspired a CBS television series of the same name, which ran from March 1990 through July 1991 and starred Whoopi Goldberg (Adlon had originally wanted Goldberg for the film role of Brenda) and Jean Stapleton (best known as Edith Bunker on All in the Family). The TV series brought a new American audience to the film’s premise, though the original film remained the dominant cultural touchstone.

The Interior: What You’ll Find When You Walk In

The Bagdad Café’s interior is unlike that of any other building on Route 66. Walking through the door is to walk into the accumulated record of three decades of international visitation — a living guestbook built from flags, stickers, business cards, notes, photographs, and small objects left by visitors from every corner of the world.

The ceiling and walls are covered in flags from dozens of countries — an organic installation that grew flag by flag over the years as visiting travelers from France, Germany, Brazil, Japan, Australia, the United Kingdom, and beyond left their national colors as evidence of the journey they had made. The guestbooks — multiple volumes stretching back several decades — are filled predominantly with entries in French, reflecting the enormous French cultural attachment to the film and the regular busloads of French tourists who arrive at the café as part of organized Route 66 tours. The walls themselves serve as a message board, covered in stickers and handwritten notes in languages from around the world.

A small noticeboard near the entrance features photographs of the film’s cast and crew during the 1987 production — snapshots of Jack Palance, CCH Pounder, Marianne Sägebrecht, and the other actors on the set that is now the room visitors are standing in. A portrait of John Wayne hangs above the hallway leading to the restrooms — a reminder that the building predates the film and has its own Desert Southwest identity separate from the movie that made it famous. The silver Airstream trailer that served as Jack Palance’s dressing room during production still sits outside, a piece of film history in the parking area.

The Bagdad Café Today: What to Expect on Your Visit

As of 2025–2026, the Bagdad Café is open for visitors but not currently operating as a full-service restaurant. The café serves cold drinks — sodas, beer, coffee — and has a gift shop selling souvenirs, T-shirts, mugs, shot glasses, bracelets, and branded merchandise related to the café and Route 66. Visitors are welcome to walk through the interior, photograph the interior environment, browse the guestbooks, and absorb the accumulated international character of the building.

The kitchen restoration — which includes a new roof and new ceiling installed in recent years — has been a focus of fundraising and family effort, with the goal of returning full food service to the café. The Pruett family has expressed hope for a restoration of the café’s menu in tribute to Andrea, potentially in time for the Route 66 Centennial in 2026. Travelers interested in supporting the café’s restoration can check for GoFundMe campaigns and other fundraising efforts from the Pruett family through the café’s website and social media channels.

Hours have historically been listed as 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. daily, but in a building with this much history and this precarious an operating situation, calling ahead before a special trip — (760) 257-3101 — is strongly recommended, particularly if you are traveling a significant distance specifically to visit. Current operating information is most reliably available through the café’s website (bagdad-cafe-usa.com) and social media.

The European Pilgrimage: Why the World Comes to Newberry Springs

The phenomenon that the Bagdad Café represents — a building in the middle of the Mojave Desert that most Americans have never heard of, drawing international visitors by the busload — is one of the stranger and more touching stories on all of Route 66. To understand it requires understanding what the film meant to European audiences and continues to mean.

For French and German audiences in particular, Bagdad Café was a window into an America that felt both alien and deeply human — a desert so empty it seemed impossible, populated by characters so specific and eccentric they could only be real. The film captured something about the American West that no Hollywood production of its era was interested in capturing: the loneliness, the failure, the stubborn persistence of people living in a landscape that seemed designed to defeat them, and the extraordinary capacity for transformation that those same people carried. The song “Calling You” became an anthem for a generation of European listeners who had never been to the Mojave Desert but who understood, in Jevetta Steele’s voice, exactly what the desert was calling them toward.

Tour operators in France and Germany developed Route 66 bus tours that specifically included the Bagdad Café as a stop. Andrea Pruett described one tour driver who dropped passengers off a short distance down the highway so they could “see what it’s like walking through the Mojave Desert down the highway to the Bagdad Café — just like in the movie.” The café’s merchandise — particularly the fringed T-shirts that Pruett wore and eventually began altering for sale — became sought-after souvenirs that returned to Paris and Munich and Berlin as physical evidence of a pilgrimage completed. The café was described at various points as a strong candidate for the title of “the most visited café in the world,” a claim impossible to verify but entirely consistent with the international traffic the building has received.

Bagdad, California: The Ghost Town That Named the Film

The town of Bagdad, California — the real Bagdad — is located approximately 50 miles east of Newberry Springs on the old Route 66 alignment, between Amboy and Ludlow. Founded in 1883 as a railroad stop on the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad (later the Santa Fe), Bagdad was part of the same alphabetically-named series of Mojave Desert railroad stations that included Amboy, Bristol, Cadiz, and Danby. The town grew to support travelers on Route 66 and had its own Bagdad Café at various points in its history.

When Interstate 40 bypassed the old Route 66 alignment in 1973, Bagdad — like Amboy and dozens of other Mojave Desert towns — lost its economic reason to exist almost overnight. The town was gradually abandoned, and the last structures were razed in 1991 — the year the Sidewinder Café in Newberry Springs was also closing for the first time. The real Bagdad is now a ghost: no buildings, no signs, just a dry stretch of desert where a community once stood. The Adlons’ original interest in the name — the romance of a place that existed on the map but no longer existed in reality — proved prophetic.

The Bagdad Crater — not to be confused with Amboy Crater further east — is another geological feature in the area that shares the ghost town’s name. Bagdad holds the California record for longest streak without rain: 767 days from 1912 to 1914, making it one of the driest inhabited places in North America during its active years and lending an additional layer of mythological appropriateness to its selection as the notional location of Adlon’s film about desert isolation.

Practical Information for Your Visit

Address: 46548 National Trails Highway (Historic Route 66), Newberry Springs, California 92365

Phone: (760) 257-3101

Website: bagdad-cafe-usa.com (check for current hours and operating status)

Historical Hours: 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. daily (verify current hours before visiting)

Current Status: Open for visitor access, souvenirs, and light beverages. Full food service was suspended pending kitchen restoration as of early 2026. Check current status before traveling a significant distance specifically for a meal.

Admission: No entrance fee.

Parking: Free, large parking area between the café and the Henning Motel sign. Suitable for all vehicle sizes including RVs and tour buses.

Cell Service: Limited in the Newberry Springs / Mojave Desert area. Download directions and the café’s contact information before leaving populated areas.

Nearest Services: Basic gas and supplies are available in Newberry Springs. For full services, Barstow (approximately 30 miles west) has all major amenities.

Best Time to Visit: Year-round. Summer (June–September) temperatures regularly exceed 105°F in the Mojave; plan for an early morning or late afternoon visit in summer. Fall and spring are the most comfortable visiting seasons.

Photography: The interior is a photographer’s treasure — flags, guestbooks, memorabilia, and the Jack Palance Airstream trailer outside. Ask permission before photographing other visitors.

Nearby Route 66 Highlights Along California’s Desert Corridor

Amboy Crater — Approximately 30 miles east on Route 66 (National Trails Highway), Amboy Crater is the only volcano on Route 66 — a free National Natural Landmark and one of the most dramatic hikes in the Mojave Desert. Pair it with a stop at Roy’s Motel and Café in Amboy, 2 miles north of the crater turnoff.

Roy’s Motel and Café, Amboy, California — About 35 miles east via National Trails Highway, Roy’s 50-foot Googie neon sign is the most photographed landmark on California’s Route 66 desert corridor. The gas station is operational and the gift shop is open.

Barstow Harvey House — Casa del Desierto — About 30 miles west in Barstow, the restored 1911 Fred Harvey railroad hotel is a National Historic Landmark housing two free museums: the Route 66 Mother Road Museum and the Western America Railroad Museum.

California Route 66 Museum, Victorville — About 65 miles west via I-15 and Route 66, the free California Route 66 Museum in Old Town Victorville’s historic Red Rooster Café on D Street.

The Wigwam Motel, San Bernardino — About 95 miles west, the iconic Wigwam Motel in San Bernardino has offered teepee-shaped rooms to Route 66 travelers since 1950. A California Historic Place and a Route 66 essential.

Route 66 in California — Complete Guide — The full overview of California’s 314-mile Route 66 corridor from Needles to the Santa Monica Pier, with every major stop documented.

Route 66 Centennial 2026 — The 100th anniversary of Route 66 is November 11, 2026. The Bagdad Café and the California desert corridor are part of the centennial story. Check this page for California celebration events.

Route 66 — Complete Guide — The definitive guide to all 2,448 miles of the Mother Road, from the Begin sign in Chicago to the End of the Trail at the Santa Monica Pier.