Ah HA! More brains are better than one :)

#!/usr/bin/perl
use CGI;
use LWP;
use LWP::Simple;
use LWP::UserAgent;

$ua = new LWP::UserAgent;
$q = new CGI;
$url = "http://10.50.1.1/pics/topbanner1.gif";
$req= HTTP::Request->new(GET => $url);
$req->header('Accept' => "$mime_type");
$page = $ua->request($req);

if ($page->is_success) {
    print "Content-type: $mime_type\n\n";
    print $page->content;
} else {
    print $q->header,
         $q->start_html($page->error_as_HTML),
         $q->h1($error),
         $q->end_html;
}
[download]

IT WORKS! Thanks to all who helped :) I'm still looking into that proxy feature though as an option.