NASSAU, Bahamas — The guests of honor were feuding. Spectators booed and cheered behind steel barricades. A crew from an entertainment television program buzzed around a coffin draped in a rhinestone-studded pink cover.
Anna Nicole's Smith's funeral on Friday was part soap opera, part circus — perhaps a fitting combination for a woman who found a niche on the ragged outer edge of celebrity as a former Playboy Playmate and reality TV star.
But for those who came to pay their respects, the event was a solemn one despite the atmosphere. "It was very, very sad," said Kathryn Beranich, who was supervising producer of Smith's reality TV show. "Seeing the casket being rolled down, you realize this friend … will no longer be with us."
While Smith was mourned at a lavish memorial service, the fight over her baby daughter — and a potential multimillion-dollar inheritance — remained very much alive. Her companion Howard K. Stern, her mother, Virgie Arthur, and her former boyfriend Larry Birkhead are battling for custody of 5-month-old Dannielynn.
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Smith's mahogany coffin, topped by the pink blanket with rhinestones spelling out her name, was carried into Mount Horeb Baptist Church as hundreds of tourists and fans watched from behind steel barricades guarded by police. Some in the crowd cried out, "Anna! Anna! We love you!"
Inside the church, Smith's favorite color was on display. Pink roses and flower arrangements lined the aisle and adorned the altar, where organizers placed two photos of the blonde bombshell — including one showing her in a shimmering white gown and striking a Marilyn Monroe-like pose.
There were fewer than 100 guests at the service, even though organizers said about 300 — including an "Entertainment Tonight" camera crew — had been invited.
Arthur, Birkhead and Stern took turns eulogizing Smith, who died last month at age 39 in a Florida hotel.
"It was pretty tough. The funeral itself was a mixture of emotions, there was a lot of crying and laughing," Birkhead told MSNBC after the service.
Beranich said she thought Smith would have been happy with the ceremony, but "I think she wouldn't have been pleased with the division between her biological family and the extended family she created and loved," she told The Associated Press.
Smith was later buried next to her 20-year-old son, Daniel, who died in September of an apparent drug overdose while visiting Smith in the hospital after she gave birth.
"Entertainment Tonight" said she was buried with an urn containing some of the ashes of her late husband, Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II.
At the gravesite, a small flock of doves was released.
Ruby Ann Darling, who described herself as Smith's spiritual adviser, said Arthur, Stern and Birkhead each left one pink and one red rose on top of the coffin in the ground.
Onlookers, a mixture of Bahamians and tourists, spontaneously broke into the hymn "When Peace Like a River" as the white hearse reached the cemetery.
Some in the crowd booed Smith's mother when she arrived, though she had been cheered earlier by the crowd outside the memorial service.
In a last-minute bid to halt the burial, Arthur, who wanted her daughter buried in her native Texas, sought to have Supreme Court Justice Anita Adams grant her custody of Smith's body, but the Bahamian judge denied the request just before the service began, according to Lilliemae MacDonald, the judge's secretary.
