Image taken by Eric W. Schnittke
Every so often, you stumble across an oddity in the archives. This week, I found something that piqued my interest. A researcher was visiting the archives, looking through records from Erich Schmidt’s expedition to Persepolis, Iran. Part of this particular collection is a set of photo albums containing prints that Schmidt had collected during his travels across Iran. One of the albums had a page from a musical score stuck to it. Being something a musical theatre geek, I recognized what the music was from right away. The page is part of the score from the 1927 musical Show Boat, particularly from the song “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man of Mine”. As you can see, someone at one point had tried to remove the page from the cover, but I’m glad part of it remains. Though we don’t know how the page happened to become stuck to the cover of the album, it adds an interesting touch and story to a part of our collection.