Short answers, pulled from the story.
William Wyler received twelve nominations for the Academy Award for Best Director, the most in the history of that category. He won three times, for Mrs. Miniver (1942), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), and Ben-Hur (1959).
Fourteen actors won Academy Awards under William Wyler's direction. He also directed thirty-six performers to Oscar nominations, a record that no other director in Academy history has matched.
Wyler served as a major in the United States Army Air Forces between 1942 and 1945. While filming The Memphis Belle, he flew on bombing missions over enemy territory and lost consciousness from oxygen deprivation on one flight. While working on Thunderbolt!, he was exposed to damaging noise that left him deaf in one ear. He returned home a lieutenant colonel and a disabled veteran.
Ben-Hur's budget grew from $7 million to $15 million during production, and MGM was already in serious financial difficulty. Wyler and star Charlton Heston both understood that if the film failed at the box office, MGM might go bankrupt. The film earned $47 million by the end of 1961 and $90 million worldwide.
Wyler's mother Melanie was a distant cousin of Carl Laemmle, the founder of Universal Pictures. After Wyler proved unsuited to the family haberdashery business, his mother contacted Laemmle, who hired Wyler in 1921 to work at Universal Studios in New York for a weekly wage of $25.
Davis won her second Academy Award for Wyler's 1938 film Jezebel and told Merv Griffin in 1972 that Wyler had trained her to be a "far, far better actress" than she had been. She later said he helped her realize her full potential and that she had "met her match" in him as a director. Davis thanked him publicly during her AFI Life Achievement Award acceptance speech in 1977.