auth_basic "pass through"

[AJ Weber]

I'm having trouble setting up nginx in front of tomcat to handle ssl and 
reverse proxy/caching.

Basically the webapp behind nginx uses http authentication (browser 
prompts, not a webpage login), and I think what's happening is that 
handshake/traffic is not getting back and forth for the initial 
connection.  The authentication is performed against a custom 
implementation, so I can't just remove it and move it to a passwd file.

Has anyone run into this, or are there any suggestions?

Thanks,
AJ