1983 · music video
The real Broadway theatre behind Thriller’s cinema sequence, and the 2024 screening that brought the film back to its location.
Thriller places a cinema inside a cinematic illusion. Its Palace Theatre setting is a real Los Angeles entertainment building with a history much older than Michael Jackson’s short film. The location offers a particularly clear way to move between a screen image and a surviving façade on Broadway.
Markers identify buildings or documented location references. They do not mark an exact recording room, stage position or camera angle.
The Los Angeles Conservancy identifies the Palace at 630 South Broadway as the Orpheum circuit’s 1911 home. It became the Palace when the Orpheum moved in 1926. G. Albert Lansburgh designed the building, whose decorated façade evokes a Renaissance palazzo. That earlier entertainment history gives the film setting depth: the theatre was already built to turn an ordinary night on the street into a spectacle. Its appearance in Thriller adds a new layer to a building conceived for performance long before music television. [2]
Heal Los Angeles Foundation’s account identifies the Palace as a backdrop to the 1983 short film. On 26 October 2024, its This is Thriller event returned the film to that location with screenings and a discussion featuring makeup artist Rick Baker. The venue therefore carries two different relationships to the work: it appears in the original film and later hosted an event about its making. Seen from Broadway, the façade connects those histories. Inside, the 2024 audience watched a screen representation of a place they had just entered. [1]
630 South Broadway, downtown Los Angeles
1983
The Palace Theatre in downtown Los Angeles served as a backdrop for Michael Jackson’s Thriller short film in 1983. [1]
26 October 2024
Heal Los Angeles Foundation held This is Thriller at the Palace Theatre on 26 October 2024, including a documentary screening and a Q&A with Rick Baker. [1]
The theatre façade can be understood from Broadway. Interior access depends on the operator’s programme and arrangements. The 2024 event is historical, not a recurring event promised by this page.
