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Eddie Fisher & Liz Taylor: Brangelina Of The 1950s

LOS ANGELES (CBS) - They weren't movie co-stars and they didn't have six kids, but Eddie Fisher and Elizabeth Taylor ignited a scandal that went unrivaled until 2005 when Brad Pitt divorced Jennifer Aniston to take up with his "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" co-star, Angelina Jolie.

PICTURES: Elizabeth Taylor
PICTURES: Taylor's many marriages
PICTURES: Eddie Fisher

It wasn't a shared movie, but a shared tragedy that led Fisher to divorce first wife, Debbie Reynolds, to marry Taylor.

That tragedy was the death in a plane crash of producer Mike Todd, who was Taylor's husband and Fisher's best friend. The two couples were often pictured together in gossip columns and movie magazines.

Fisher comforted the widow. Then, amid sensationalist headlines, Fisher divorced Reynolds, the mother of his two children, and married Taylor in Las Vegas in 1959.

That marriage lasted five years. Taylor dumped Fisher to marry her "Cleopatra" co-star, Richard Burton.

Fisher went on to marry three more times. In September 2010, Eddie Fisher passed away in his Berkeley home of complications from hip surgery.

READ MORE: 1950s Pop Singer Eddie Fisher Dies

Taylor had seven husbands in all. She and Reynolds co-starred in the 2001 TV movie "These Old Broads" with Joan Collins and Shirley MacLaine.

(Copyright 2011 by CBS San Francisco. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Wire services may have contributed to this report.)

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