diff --git a/examples/playbook.yml b/examples/playbook.yml
index 527c7bf1aa..daf91a028b 100644
--- a/examples/playbook.yml
+++ b/examples/playbook.yml
@@ -15,6 +15,9 @@
   - name: execute bin false
     comment: call something that will fail just to demo failure counts and such
     action: command /bin/false
+  - name: execute bin true
+    comment: this will never be executed because previous will fail
+    action: command /bin/true
   handlers:
     - name: restart apache
       action: service name=httpd state=restarted
diff --git a/lib/ansible/playbook.py b/lib/ansible/playbook.py
index be4a6420d0..1acf6d06ad 100755
--- a/lib/ansible/playbook.py
+++ b/lib/ansible/playbook.py
@@ -110,6 +110,14 @@ class PlayBook(object):
             # actions where not all hosts have changed
             # though top-level tasks will pass in "None" here
             host_list = self.host_list
+        host_list = ansible.runner.Runner.parse_hosts(host_list)
+
+        # do not continue to run tasks on hosts that have had failures
+        new_hosts = []
+        for x in host_list:
+            if not self.failures.has_key(x):
+                new_hosts.append(x)
+        host_list = new_hosts
 
         # load the module name and parameters from the task
         # entry
diff --git a/lib/ansible/runner.py b/lib/ansible/runner.py
index f8d5cbcda8..e505ac7640 100755
--- a/lib/ansible/runner.py
+++ b/lib/ansible/runner.py
@@ -66,7 +66,7 @@ class Runner(object):
         '''
 
         # save input values
-        self.host_list   = self._parse_hosts(host_list)
+        self.host_list   = self.parse_hosts(host_list)
         self.module_path = module_path
         self.module_name = module_name
         self.forks       = forks
@@ -78,7 +78,8 @@ class Runner(object):
         self.remote_pass = remote_pass
         self._tmp_paths = {}
 
-    def _parse_hosts(self, host_list):
+    @classmethod
+    def parse_hosts(cls, host_list):
         ''' parse the host inventory file if not sent as an array '''
 
         # if the host list is given as a string load the host list