Occasionally Finney would be hired to make low-budget features for Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC); some of these were good enough to be distributed by the more prosperous Monogram studio.
Finney retired from production in 1952, but in 1957 he partially financed the quickie exploitation film Gun Girls and took screen credit as producer, under the pseudonym "Edward Frank."
In 1959 Edward Finney read newspaper accounts of singing star Gloria Jean now working as a hostess in a restaurant favored by movie people.
He wrote, produced, and edited the new film, the lightweight comedy Laffing Time, co-starring Finney himself (as comedian "Eddie Finn") and veteran comic El Brendel.
A third version, Tobo the Happy Clown (1966), added footage from antique comedies and was aimed at the kiddie-matinée market; Finney played the title role.