Bizarrely enough the perl snipet you sent me worked. I swear on a stack of Orielly books that I did exactly what you suggested last night and it didn't work. Oh well... However I spoke to our architect and he shunned CDONTS because you don't have control over the headers and footers. He suggested MIME::Lite as an alternative.
There actually is a way to get control over the headers and footers, but it's not a pretty hack (plus I don't remember it off hand). Anyways, MIME::Lite is a better choice and is less system and software dependant.