The crowds finally parted for Elizabeth Taylor as the screen legend was buried yesterday in a small private ceremony on a quiet hill outside Los Angeles. A superstar who had been mobbed for most of her life was sent on her way in a short service attended by no more than a few dozen family and close friends.
Close in life to Michael Jackson, Taylor is now even closer to the singer in death as she was buried in the same mausoleum building where he was laid to rest in 2009.
But proving to be a Hollywood great until the end, the Cleopatra even managed to be fashionably late for her own funeral - under instructions she left. 'She even wanted to be late for her own funeral,' a family rep said in a statement.
As a convoy of five black stretch limos swept the mourners through the main entrance of the Forest Lawns Memorial Park cemetery in Glendale, they were watched at a respectful distance by a phalanx of the world’s media - including circling helicopters - but only a handful of fans.
The 79-year-old actress only died of heart failure on Wednesday but a combination of her Jewish faith – which she adopted in 1959 and which demands speedy burial – and her family’s evident desire to avoid a media circus for once in her life ensured her burial took most people by surprise.
It was not clear who exactly was inside the blacked out limos but it would have included Taylor’s four children from three of her seven husbands - Michael and Christopher Wilding, Liza Todd and Maria Burton – as well as most if not all of her 10 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
There had been speculation that she would be buried next to her parents – and close to Marilyn Monroe – at a more centrally-located Los Angeles cemetery at Westwood Village. It had also been mooted that she might be laid to rest in Wales in a grave belonging to the family of her late husband Richard Burton.
Burton’s family had said they were hoping to honour the agreement the twice-married couple had made to be be buried together at a cemetery in Pontrhydyfen, near Port Talbot. Particularly given that Burton is actually buried in Switzerland - for tax reasons – it seemed a forlorn hope that as glamorous a star as Taylor would end her days under the grey skies of south Wales.
Close in life to Michael Jackson, Taylor is now even closer to the singer in death as she was buried in the same mausoleum building where he was laid to rest in 2009.
But proving to be a Hollywood great until the end, the Cleopatra even managed to be fashionably late for her own funeral - under instructions she left. 'She even wanted to be late for her own funeral,' a family rep said in a statement.
As a convoy of five black stretch limos swept the mourners through the main entrance of the Forest Lawns Memorial Park cemetery in Glendale, they were watched at a respectful distance by a phalanx of the world’s media - including circling helicopters - but only a handful of fans.
The 79-year-old actress only died of heart failure on Wednesday but a combination of her Jewish faith – which she adopted in 1959 and which demands speedy burial – and her family’s evident desire to avoid a media circus for once in her life ensured her burial took most people by surprise.
It was not clear who exactly was inside the blacked out limos but it would have included Taylor’s four children from three of her seven husbands - Michael and Christopher Wilding, Liza Todd and Maria Burton – as well as most if not all of her 10 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
There had been speculation that she would be buried next to her parents – and close to Marilyn Monroe – at a more centrally-located Los Angeles cemetery at Westwood Village. It had also been mooted that she might be laid to rest in Wales in a grave belonging to the family of her late husband Richard Burton.
Burton’s family had said they were hoping to honour the agreement the twice-married couple had made to be be buried together at a cemetery in Pontrhydyfen, near Port Talbot. Particularly given that Burton is actually buried in Switzerland - for tax reasons – it seemed a forlorn hope that as glamorous a star as Taylor would end her days under the grey skies of south Wales.
