Behind the singin': Peter Fitzgerald looks back at 50 years of Singin' in the Rain for a new DVD release. (video).

"I grew up in Orange Country [Calif.] and used to watch it on a black-and-white TV when I was 9 years old," recalls Peter Fitzgerald of when he first became enamored of Singin' in the Rain. "That was when I fell in love with the classic musicals. I also used to watch The Wizard of Oz and never knew until years later that the movie went color when Dorothy opened the door of her house."

Fitzgerald started researching Singin' in the Rain 10 years ago for the musical's 40th anniversary laser-disc release. And now he's written, produced, and directed What a Glorious Feeling, a new documentary featured on the 50th anniversary DVD edition of the Gene Kelly-Stanley Donen classic.

So in love with musicals was Fitzgerald that he spent six years as a performer in Broadway shows such as A Chorus Line in his 20s before returning to California, where he established himself as an archivist and documentary filmmaker. "It always amazes me when I sit down with someone who was involved in these films and they give me a nugget that I didn't know before," he says.

The documentary is hosted by Debbie Reynolds, who played Kathy Selden in the 1952 movie at the tender age of 20. "When my father visited the set, she came straight out with the question, `How does it feel to have a gay son?'" says Fitzgerald. "He replied, `You can't really control any thing your kids do,' to which she, of course, laughed. I love speaking to folks from that era."

Fitzgerald attributes Singin' in the Rain's appeal to gay folk to its heightened sense of theatricality and its subject of show business. So how gay were the teams making the great MGM musicals? "There were so many gay men in the MGM infrastructure," he says. "The Freed unit was known as the F unit--F standing for fairies. Many of the dancers, costumers, choreographers were gay, and of course there's a strong gay sensibility in the movies. There's a tougher sensibility in movies today, but back then it was still a time where you could innocently immerse yourself in the magic of the musicals."

Goodridge is U.S. editor of Screen International.