"This town is like a wild animal in chains, Molly," says Marshal Calem Ware to his landlady while she fries his bacon and eggs for breakfast. "It doesn't fight back right away. It just lies there and snarls, waiting for a chance to pounce on you." <br /><br />"Be careful, Calem," is Molly's helpful advice. <br /><br />A Lawless Street is the story of Calem Ware (Randolph Scott) and his determination to bring law and order to Medicine Bend. Unknown to Ware, there is a faction in town determined to run things wide open. Money -- big money -- is involved. This means Ware has to be taken care of. A hired killer with a draw as fast as Calem's might be the answer. Complicating matters for Ware is the arrival of Tally Dickerson (Angela Lansbury), a music hall singer engaged to play with her troupe at the town's new opera house. Nine years ago the two were man and wife, then Tally left him. They're still married. "I didn't know what it was like for a man to make his living with his gun," Tally tells Caleb when they meet again, "walking the streets a living target. I died a little more each day and I died more at night." Even Lansbury can't do much with lines like that. <br /><br />The movie is packed with such poor writing that we don't believe a minute of it. The script is full of characters who tell each who they are and what motivates them, instead of demonstrating this. At frequent intervals an out-of-breath minor character rushes up to Caleb to announce another crisis is at hand. Thank goodness we have Scott's steadfastness to believe in and the smiling sleaziness of John Emery, playing one of the bad guys, to enjoy. The writing is so poor it makes even a fine actress like Angela Lansbury sound like someone from a daytime soap opera. We have Lansbury singing and dancing once, but I'd swear her singing was dubbed, a strange decision. <br /><br />Although I thought the movie might be interesting with the odd duo of a 57-year-old Randolph Scott with the 30-year-old Angela Lansbury, the pairing seemed uncomfortable and unlikely. The film's modest pleasures come from a handful of long-time character actors, such as Wallace Ford, who died a memorable death in a steam room in Blood on the Sun, Ruth Donnelly, always good in many movies as the often irascible but good-hearted motherly type, and, of course, Emery. I always admired the way he tried to put the moves on Ingrid Bergman in Spellbound.