"I want to keep away from such assignments, as I can from now on, even though, as some may say, they mean exercising your skill and talent in acting." Parker heard about a film Warners were making of a woman in prison , "Caged" (1950), and actively lobbied the role. She got it, and won the 1950 Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award. She also had a good role in the melodrama "Three Secrets" (1950). In February 1950, Parker left Warner Bros. after having been under contract there for eight years. Parker had understood that she would star in a film called "Safe Harbor", but Warner Bros. apparently had no intention of making it. Because of this misunderstanding, her agents negotiated her release. Parker's career outside of Warners started badly with "Valentino" (1951) playing a fictionalized wife of Rudolph Valentino for producer Edward Small. She tried a comedy at 20th Century Fox with Fred MacMurray, "A Millionaire for Christy" (1951) (originally called "The Golden Goose"). In 1951, Parker signed a contract with Paramount for one film a year, with an option for outside films. This arrangement began brilliantly with "Detective Story" (1951) for director William Wyler, playing Mary McLeod, the woman who doesn't understand the position of her unstable detective husband (played by Kirk Douglas); Parker was nominated for the Oscar in 1951 for her performance. Parker followed "Detective Story" with her portrayal of an actress in love with a swashbuckling nobleman (played by Stewart Granger) in "Scaramouche" (1952), a role originally intended for Ava Gardner. Parker later claimed that Granger was the only person she didn't get along with during her entire career. However, they had good chemistry, and the film was a massive hit; MGM rushed her into "Above and Beyond" (1952), a biopic of Lt. Col. Paul W. Tibbets, Jr. (Robert Taylor), the pilot of the aircraft that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It was a solid hit. While Parker was making a third film for MGM, "Escape from Fort Bravo" (1953), she signed a five-year contract to the studio. She was named as star of a Sidney Sheldon script, "My Most Intimate Friend" and of "One More Time", from a script by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin directed by George Cukor, but neither film was made.