Michael Jackson’s gold and black coffin will be transported to the Staples Centre for todays memorial service after a private funeral service at the Forest Lawn Memorial park in Hollywood Hills.

The coffin, rumored to cost $US25,000 and be made of solid bronze, plated with 14-karat gold, was seen arriving at the cemetery last night, along with members of Jackson’s family.

The 80s King of Pop will be interred at a private family service two hours before the memorial service gets underway with a large police cordon put in place to keep grieving fans and the media out.

Jackson’s parents, Joe and Katherine, together with his musical siblings, will head downtown to the Staples Center after the service for the memorial performance.

It’s been reported that Debbie Rowe, the biological mother of Jackson’s two oldest children, will not be with them and will not attend the memorial service.

The Forest Lawn memorial park and mortuary at Hollywood Hills is on the lower north slope at the far east end of the Santa Monica Mountains range overlooking North Hollywood and Burbank in the San Fernando Valley, in a park dedicated to the preservation of American history.

Before it was a cemetery Forest Lawn was used as a filming location, with the climactic battle scenes for D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, just one of the productions to use it.

Other Hollywood personalities interred in the lushly landscaped, gently rolling hills and manicured green lawns there include Bette Davis, Lucille Ball, Telly Savalas, William Conrad, Buster Keaton, Liberace, Freddie Prinze, Andy Gibb, Jack Webb, Stan Laurel, Ricky Nelson, and more recently David Carradine.