Elizabeth Taylor's funeral takes place in LA's celebrity cemetery
Ewen MacAskill www.theguardian.com
<p>Service attended by friends and family comes day after death, in keeping with Jewish faith</p>
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the Guardian
Elizabeth Taylor has been buried at a cemetery in Los Angeles favoured by film stars and other celebrities, including her friend Michael Jackson.

The service came a day after her death, in keeping with the Jewish faith to which she converted in her 20s. It was attended only by about 40 friends and members of her family. A public memorial service is planned for a later date.

Taylor, who was married eight times, had four children, who were all at the funeral: daughters Maria Burton-Carson and Liza Todd-Tivey and sons Christopher and Michael Wilding.

Sergeant Tom Lorenz, a police spokesman, said Taylor was placed in the great mausoleum in Forest Lawn memorial park but in a different wing from Jackson.

"There's nowhere in the world where more famous people are laid to rest," Lorenz was quoted as saying in the Los Angeles Times.

The celebrity website TMZ said other stars in the cemetery included James Stewart, Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart and Spencer Tracy.

The funeral home quotes Time magazine describing the great mausoleum as "the new world's Westminster Abbey".

The service ended speculation that Taylor might be buried in Wales alongside her former husband Richard Burton.

In spite of the short notice of the service, dozens of fans and television crews were outside the cemetery in time to see the hearse and five limousines arrive.

The Westboro Baptist Church, the tiny religious group that stirs up controversy by protesting outside funerals to highlight its anti-gay message, had threatened to mount a demonstration but appeared to have been caught off guard by the speed of the service.

Police were asked to help with security because of fears that Westboro protesters would attend, and also because children would be leaving a school at roughly the same time as the funeral.

Taylor converted to Judaism in 1959 before her marriage to her fourth husband, the Jewish singer Eddie Fisher.

Rabbi Jerry Cutler presided over the traditional Jewish ceremony for Taylor, according to TMZ. She died on Wednesday, aged 79, at a hospital in Los Angeles where she had been undergoing treatment for heart trouble.

The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Monday 28 March 2011. The report about Elizabeth Taylor's funeral in Los Angeles said it ended speculation that she might be buried in Wales, alongside her former husband Richard Burton. Although Burton and Taylor had made plans when they were married to be buried together in Pontrhydyfen in south Wales, he was buried in the Swiss village of Céligny, near Geneva.