Talk:Fools' Parade

	Film portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Film. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see lists of open tasks and regional and topical task forces. To use this banner, please refer to the documentation. To improve this article, please refer to the guidelines.FilmWikipedia:WikiProject FilmTemplate:WikiProject Filmfilm articles
Start	This article has been rated as Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
	This article is supported by the American cinema task force.

Templates

Please do not remove the uncat and wikify templates unless you add the article to one or more categories (for uncat) or revise the article to conform to Wikipedia style (wikify). Erechtheus 15:38, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Notes

Junior Kilfong shoots the "drummer" Roy K. Sizemore, mistakenly, with a .30-30 Winchester. Matty Appleyard is pursued because he is carrying a cashiers' check for the $25,452.32. Another name for the book was "Appalachian Echoes". It is a good description of the miners' lot in the late nineteenth through early twentieth century, during the union struggles. It also is an accurate description of the beginnings of dynamite blasting in the East, in the 1880s. Mr. Sizemore is an unwitting victim, as, quite often, dynamite was smuggled on "common carriers" during the 1930s to save freight. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.171.235.149 (talk) 02:34, 6 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Worth mentioning are the pristine, white sneakers worn by Doc Council. Council changes them whenever they show the slightest amount of dirt, even while performing his "dirty" work. The director focuses on them, although they're not essential to the plot. In the end, following the dynamite blast, a single white sneaker flying in through the window of the abandoned house tells the viewer that Doc Council is dead, without showing gore. —Quicksilver^{T @} 00:52, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Further notes; reversal of roles; allusion of Council to Harry Powell

James Stewart was a natural for the role of Matty Appleyard. He is a very beloved American actor, from Indiana, Pennsylvania, a small coal mining town near West Virginia.

It is interesting to note that Arthur Kennedy and Strother Martin (a character actor) have "reversed" roles from "Cool Hand Luke" in this movie, where Martin plays the sadistic jailer and Kennedy on a chain gang. Remember Martin's infamous line: "What we have here is a failure to communicate", as he beats Paul Newman?

In Fools' Parade, Kennedy plays a very believable, evil preacher-gone-bad (like Harry Powell, played by Robert Mitchum, in Davis Grubb's previous "Night of the Hunter"). He is as evil as Hannibal Lecter, or Lee Van Cleef, or the great Jack Palance. 70.171.235.149 02:38, 7 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Mattie Appleyard

It's been some 30 years since I saw the film and currently do not have access to either the film or the book, but I seem to recall that Mattie Appleyard wasn't a common criminal, as the article now implies. If memory serves, he was a mining engineer who found himself in a desperate situation and used dynamite in self defense to kill pursuers with evil intentions. He was unjustly convicted of murder nonetheless, and that forms the background of the story. If someone can watch the film or read the novel, this point should be clarified. —Quicksilver^{T @} 01:05, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

He was simply a miner. He got mixed up in a union strike; two goons were shooting at him and his partner. His partner was shot dead (as mentioned in movie); Appleyard defended himself. Since he went up agasinst the rich, powerful mine owners, he did not stand a fair chance in court and was convicted.70.162.46.94 (talk) 02:28, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]