Bravo for Wales' Oscar heroes; As Catherine Zeta Jones prepares to learn her fate at Sunday's Oscar ceremony,Alun Prichard charts the nation's history at the world's most prestigious awards.

Byline: Alun Prichard

BEHIND the banks of photographers jostling for position on the red carpet and wishing were they taller and the interviewers thrusting out their microphones wishing they had longer arms will be an ambulance.

This private ambulance will lie in wait just off the melee outside Hollywood's Kodak Theatre on Sunday night, the paramedics sheltering under a Tinseltown palm tree.

But it is not there to resuscitate the surprised hearts of older-than-they-admit nominees,or to pump the stomachs of some of the younger,more enthusiastic,Champagne guzzlers. It waits in case the stresses of Oscar expectancy see the expectant Catherine Zeta Jones go into labour.

Zeta Jones,in the latter stages of her second pregnancy, is the latest in a long line of Welsh men and women to have been nominated for an Oscar and bookies have her favourite or second favourite to follow her Bafta success by coming out on top on Sunday night and joining the few Welsh stars who have won.

The first Welsh actor to pick up an Oscar was not Anglesey's Hugh Griffith,as many assume, but Ray Milland.

Born Reginald Alfred John Truscott-Jones in 1907 in Cymla outside Neath,he took his stage name from the flat Mill lands in Neath and took the Best Actor award in 1945.

He had entered British films in 1929 and just a year into his career,he went to Hollywood and began to win all kinds of roles.

Milland made over 100 films in his career but won his Oscar for his gut-wrenching portrayal of an alcoholic fighting temptation in The Lost Weekend.

One of his most famous roles post-Oscar was the suave accomplice in Dial M for Murder by Alfred Hitchcock.

But he failed to take advantage of his win to markedly further his career and was never nominated again.

In the 1950s,he starred in his own TV comedy series,The Ray Milland Show. Unlike many of the town's hell raisers,Milland preferred home to the bars and restaurants and a book to parties. He died in 1986 of lung cancer after 57 years in the movies and he was married to the same woman for for 54 years.

While Milland won his Oscar from his only nomination,one of Wales's most famous actors never actually won - and even holds the unwanted record of having the most nominations without ever securing a victory.

Richard Burton made the shortlist for the best actor award seven times in total,from My Cousin Rachel in 1952 to Equus in 1977,but most critics believe that he should have won for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf in 1966 when he starred opposite his then-wifeElizabeth Taylor The youngest of a coalminer's 12 children,Richard Walter Jenkins Jnr was born in 1925 and grew up in Pontrhydyfen between Neath and Port Talbot. He found his route to fame via a scholarship to Oxford University where he began to tread the boards. From there,he went on to the London stage,before he was signed by 20th Century Fox, who aimed to turn Burton into a new Olivier.

Anthony Hopkins told the story of meeting Burton, when he was a boy and Burton a star, and asking for an autograph and Burton asking him if he spoke Welsh. When Hopkins said he couldn't,Burton ignored him.

Although he was often cast as an Englishman due to his unforgettable voice,Burton had it written into his contracts that he never worked on St David's Day and when he died he was buried with a copy of the collected poems of Dylan Thomas.

The Swansea poet failed to inspire Burton to victory,but a film of his life won Welshman Jack Howells an Oscar for Best Short Documentary in 1962.

The greatest Welsh actor of the modern era has to be Anthony Hopkins, who was nominated as Best Actor in the 1990s and won on his first attempt for Silence of the Lambs in 1991. The power of the Oscar to the casting directors is obvious,as Hopkins has made over 20 films since he first took the role of Hannibal Lector.

His three other nominations came in 1994 for Remains of the Day,1996 for Nixon and 1997 for Amistad. But the only Oscar to return to North Wales is the one won by Hugh Griffith, who hailed from Marian Glas on Anglesey, as Best Supporting Actor opposite Charlton Heston in the 1959 film Ben Hur. His nephew William Roger Jones,of Llanbedrog, says of his former bank clerk uncle from Marian Glas who found his way to the London stage via a pre-war scholarship to RADA: ``I don't remember him talking much about the Oscar, but I know he was very proud and glad of it.

``It meant a great deal to him; I remember him saying that he had done another film about the same time as Ben Hur called the Counterfeit Traitor with William Holden. He said: `Had I done that after having won the Oscar,I would have earned so much more money'. That film was released after Ben Hur,but made earlier.

``I don't remember ever seeing it on the mantlepiece or anywhere obvious, but I'm sure he showed people his Oscar because the gold plate has worn in places - there has been a fair amount of handling of it. ``After Ben Hur in 1959,he made some films that didn't go down well because he didn't choose wisely. But he came back with Tom Jones in 1963 and was Oscar-nominated again,but he didn't win that year.'' Unlike Burton,Griffith did not move Stateside, preferring to live in London and,although somewhat of a loner,he was friendly with many of the wild crowd of actors including Richard Harris and Trevor Howard. This hard- drinking bunch would not have been much of shock to Griffith,as he had shared a house with fellow first-language Welsh speaker Richard Burton when they both worked in Strat-ford. ``I think that the stage was his first love,but like so many others he moved into film because there was more money and that is where they make their names,'' says Jones. Griffith's family remained in Wales and the film star would often come home in a flash car to visit the m,as his nephew explains: ``He was very kind man who was very proud of his background and his roots. He used to love to come back to Wales and Anglesey especially and he would often stay with his cousin in Holyhead. At one time he even thought of buying somewhere in Anglesey. ``He was also very conscious of his Welshness and was very friendly with Saunders Lewis,but like so many other Welsh actors,he had to go to England and America to play to larger audiences.'' Not only was his homeland important to him - so was his mother tongue and when he played Shakespeare's Owain Glyndr, the bard asks only for the player to babble in Welsh, but Griffith wrote a piece to use. And many a Welsh cinema goer would have heard a number of on-screen foreigners yell abuse in Welsh as Griffith fooled audiences over the world that Welsh was Arabic or any other language. Griffith and Burton were proud of the language but it was not until 1991 that the Welsh language made its way to the Oscars when Hedd Wyn was nominated for the Best Foreign lan-guage film. Unfortunately the film did not scoop the award but did pave the way for another Welsh language film,Solomon a Gaenor, to win a nomination in the latter part of the century.

And if the word in Hollywood is to be believed, it looks like Catherine Zeta Jones may have more need for her ambulance than a speech on Sunday night when the envelope containing the name of the best actress winner is opened.

The personal likes and dislikes of fellow members of the academy could see the likes of Renee Zellwegger profit and Zeta Jones lose out.

Zeta Jones is up against her co-star Queen Latifah, double nominee Julianne Moore for The Hours and Academy Award winners Kathy Bates and Meryl Streep for About Schmidt and Adapt a - ti on respectively. The Oscars can be seen on BBC One from mid-night on Sunday.

CAPTION(S):

William Roger Jones admires his uncle's Hugh Griffith's Oscar, which he won for his portrayal of Sheik Ilderim in the epic film Ben Hur (below).On Sunday,Catherine Zeta Jones (far left)contends for an Oscar of her own after being nominated for her part in Chicago; Main picture: GERALLT RADCLIFFE