- Producer/director, as well as advertising and publicity manager, for Poverty Row studio Grand National. His chief claim to fame was giving cowboy singer and future western star Tex Ritter his first screen test and subsequent debut in Song of the Gringo (1936). Finney tried unsuccessfully to talk studio president Edward L. Alperson into shooting "Angels with Dirty Faces" (a story Alperson had acquired earlier and which later became a mega box-office hit, Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)],, for both James Cagney and Warner Brothers) instead of a lame musical, Something to Sing About (1937). which turned out to be Cagney's worst-ever film and the most expensive film ever made by Grand National, which ultimately bankrupted the company.
- Entered the film business as a prop man during the silent era.
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