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MEET
DEBBIE
"The
Enterprise"
October
10, 2001
by Paul C. Leibe
Dunlap
builds a 400-page web site in tribute to Cary Grant
 What
started out as a family joke has, in the past few years, turned
into a big part of Debbie Dunlap's life. Every evening the Great
Mills resident spends at least two hours at her computer,
fine-tuning her web site and responding to emails sent to her from
all over the world.
Dunlap's
web site -- www.carygrant.net -- is a tribute to the life and
works of the popular actor. Dunlap
works as a webmaster, maintaining the online sites for 30 to 40
area businesses. She
started the Cary Grant site about four years ago after her husband
jokingly suggested that she build a site to her favorite
actor.
"About
nine years ago," she explained, "we turned off our
cable. We were watching too much television. I started looking for
movies to rent, movies for the whole family to watch together. I
found two Cary Grant films at a local video store, brought them
home and we loved them. Then I went looking for more at all the
stores in the area.
Eventually
I got online and started checking sites for more movies," she
continued, "and, in doing so I got more interested in Cary
Grant the person. I started gathering all the information I could
find about him."
One
evening about four years ago, she said, her husband, as a joke,
posted a picture of Cary Grant on a web site and suggested that
his wife build a tribute page around her favorite actor. Dunlap
accepted the challenge and soon had four pages dedicated to Grant.
Now,
four years later, her site is one of the most comprehensive and
largest Cary Grant sites on the Internet. It contains more than
400 pages of information, photographs, biographies, sound and
movie clips, a filmography and other topics. "I'm getting
about 50,000 hits [visitors clicking onto her web site] a
month," she said.
Because
of her web site, Dunlap has received e-mails and telephone calls
from people who were either looking for more information about the
actor, passing information along to her for inclusion in her site,
or just complimenting her on her efforts. "I even did a live
telephone interview on the BBC [British radio] recently,"
where she talked about her web site, she said. "There's a
five hour difference in time zones, so I had to stay up until 3
a.m. to be on their morning show."
Dunlap
has collected on videotape, all 72 of Cary Grant's films. "I
want to preserve these films as much as I can," she said.
"I would like to put them on DVD because, even though they're
on tape now, the tapes are degrading just sitting there."
Dunlap has also collected photographs, posters and other
memorabilia from 60 of Grant's films, and is hoping to acquire at
least one item representative of each of his films.
Dunlap
said that her ever-growing hobby has been a labor of love.
"A
labor-intensive labor of love," she said.
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