【推荐1】Billy Wilder （1906﹣2002）was a Jewish Polish﹣born American filmmaker， screenwriter，producer. Many experts say that Billy Wilder changed the history of American movies. He is often called the best movie maker Hollywood has ever had.

Billy Wilder started law' school in Vienna， Austria. Then he decided not to become a lawyer. Instead， he began reporting for a Vienna newspaper. Wilder became a screenwriter in the late 1920s while living in Berlin. After the rise of the Nazi Party， Wilder， who was Jewish， left for Paris， where he directed a movie The Bad Seed for the first time. He moved to Hollywood in 1933， and in 1939 he had a hit when he co﹣wrote the screenplay for Ninotchka. In 1944， Billy Wilder made a film called Double Indemnity. Some critics said this movie established him as one of the greatest Hollywood directors.

As a director， Billy Wilder often violated Hollywood customs about social issues. For example， someone who drank too much alcohol had rarely been a movie subject. But Wilder directed The Lost Weekend in 1945， whose subject was about alcohol. Reports at the time said manufacturers of alcoholic drinks tried to stop the movie. They did not succeed. The Lost Weekend also won the first prize of the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes， France.

In 1950， Wilder made Sunset Boulevar， which won three Academy awards. The movie marked the last time Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett wrote together. In 1954， Billy Wilder became an independent producer. The next year， Wilder's first movie The Seven Year Itch as an independent filmmaker was a huge success. In 1959， Wilder made a funny movie that was very popular. Billy Wilder continued to make interesting movies through the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies.

In recent years， however， Billy Wilder received many more awards and honors. Critics praised his gifts to movie making. In 1987， he received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award， which is the highest award a producer can receive， Wilder died in 2002. A current Hollywood producer said，" Billy Wilder dies. Nobody's perfect".

【推荐2】You may be familiar with those quotes, but seldom can you associate these quotes with those outstanding women behind them, not to mention the great work they did.

★ “Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.”

—Anne Frank (1929 — 1945)

Hiding from the German forces, Anne Frank, a young Jewish girl, was gifted a diary by her father when she was 13. However, her diary was published after her death in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at the age of 15. The diary served as a unique eye-witness account of life during Holocaust (mass murder of about six million Jews during World War II) and it became one of the world’s most read books.

★ “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”

—Mother Teresa (1910 — 1997)

Mother Teresa, the Nobel Peace Prize winner (1979), aimed at looking after those children who had nobody to look after them through her own order “the Missionaries of Charity”. She worked tirelessly towards her goal until her ill-health forced her to step down in March 1997, after which she took her last breath in September 1997.

★ “If you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.”

—Margaret Thatcher (1925 — 2013)

Margaret Thatcher was loved and hated equally for some of her policies but she never compromise (妥协). She was known as “the Iron Lady” for her leadership style. From being a grocer’s daughter to graduating from Oxford University to becoming a banister, she went on to become Britain’s first and to date, only female Prime Minister elected in 1979 and the country’s fifth longest serving leader.

★ “I knew someone had to take the first step and I made up my mind not to move.”

—Rosa Parks (1913 — 2005)

Also known as “the first lady of civil rights”, Rosa Parks was a pioneer of civil rights in a racially segregated Alabama in 1950s. In 1955, she refused to give away her seat to a white passenger in a bus, disobeying the bus driver’s orders. This act of hers sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott that crippled the state capital’s public transport system.

【推荐3】Red Adair became “the man to call” if you wanted a fire in an oil well to be put out, a task that was extremely dangerous and difficult. Red Adair was born in Houston, Texas in 1915. He got such a name because of his bright red hair. The color became a trademark for him. He wore red clothes and red boots. He drove a red car, and he and his men used red trucks and red equipment.

One of Red Adair’s most dangerous jobs was in 1962. He and his men put out a natural gas fire in the Sahara Desert in Algeria. Burning for six months, the fire was so fierce that American astronaut John Glenn could see it from space as he orbited Earth and the sand around the fire had melted into glass from the extreme heat. The famous fire was called the “Devil’s Cigarette Lighter”.

Adair’s success with the big fire and earlier well fires captured imagination of the American film industry. In 1968, Hollywood made an action film called “Hellfighters” which was roughly based on events in Red Adair’s life. Adair said one of the best honors in the world was to have John Wayne play him in a movie. In 1998, Adair troubleshot (排除故障)what was possibly the world’s worst ocean accident at the Piper Alpha oil platform in the North Sea. One hundred and sixty-seven men were killed when the oil rig(油井钻探设备)exploded after a gas leak. Not only did Red Adair and his team have to put out the fires but they also had to deal with winds blowing at more than one hundred and twenty kilometers an hour, as well as the sea which was at least twenty                                 meters deep.

In March of 1991, Red Adair went to Kuwait to put out at even hundred Kuwaiti fires following the Persian Gulf War. His efforts saved millions of liters of oil. Some experts say the operation also helped prevent an environmental tragedy.

Red Adair died at 89 on 7 August 2004. Many Americans remember him as a very brave man. He lived his life troubleshooting danger. He was known for risking his own life to save others.