Security tight as Jackson is laid to rest

The invitation notice indicated the service would begin promptly at 7 p.m.; it began closer to 8:30.

The 77-year-old Taylor and about 200 other mourners were left waiting in the late summer heat, with the temperature stuck at 90 degrees just before sunset. Some mourners fanned themselves with programs for the service at Forest Lawn Glendale.

A vivid orange moon, a mark of the devastating wildfire about 10 miles distant, hung over the cemetery.

Police had escorted the family’s motorcade of 31 cars, including Rolls-Royces and Cadillacs, from Encino to Forest Lawn, with the hearse bearing Jackson’s body at the end.

A large, blimp-like inflated light, the type used in film and television production, and a boom camera hovered over the seating area in front of the elaborate marble mausoleum. The equipment raised the possibility that the footage would be used for the Jackson concert documentary “This Is It.’’

About 250 seats were arranged for mourners over artificial turf laid roadside at the mausoleum. Almost double that were the media credentials, 435, issued to reporters and film crews. They remained at a distance from the service and behind barricades.

Maria Martinez, 25, a fan from Riverside, Calif., who was joined by a dozen other Jackson admirers at a gas station near the security perimeter, gave a handful of pink flowers to a man with an invitation driving into the funeral.

“Can you please put these flowers on his grave?’’ she told him. Martinez said she picked them from a nearby park.

The man consented, adding, “God bless.’’

Glendale police said all was going smoothly early in the evening and there were no arrests.

Jackson will share eternity at Forest Lawn with the likes of Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, and W.C. Fields, entombed alongside them in the mausoleum that will be all but off-limits to adoring fans who might otherwise turn the pop star’s grave into a shrine.

Jackson suffered a drug-induced death June 25 at age 50 as he was about to embark on a comeback attempt. The coroner’s office has labeled the death a homicide, and Jackson’s death certificate lists “injection by another’’ as the cause.