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,
Gli angeli con la faccia sporca (1938)],, for both
James Cagney and Warner Brothers) instead of a lame musical,
Hollywood (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.
