[13] On March 31, 1924, as reported by both The Spokane Press and Spokesman-Review the following day, Finney, then 17 and a senior at North Central High, made her professional debut with her father's company, the Laughlanders.
[27] [28] In 1950, under the direction of Jones, Finney made her Broadway debut as Mary Belle Tucker in Owen Crump's Southern Exposure, prompting Daily News critic John Chapman to hail the arrival of "the funniest character woman" he had seen since the performance, three decades earlier, of comedienne May Vokes in the Mary Rinehart/Avery Hopwood hit play The Bat.
[29]Subsequent Broadway appearances elicited praise from critics such as Joe Morgenstern of the Herald Tribune, Howard Taubman of the Times, and Martin Gottfried of Women's Wear Daily.
[32] Louis Sheaffer of The Brooklyn Eagle, reviewing the 1952 playwright-helmed revival of Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour, commends Finney's "brilliant characterization" for "catch[ing] all the anemic viciousness of the aunt".
She illuminated the woman's skinny little soul so completely that I couldn't help feeling a grudging pity for the spiteful, pathetic character.
One brief but notable exception concerns the Kraft Television Theatre episode "We Haven't Seen Her Lately," described by Herald Tribune critic Sid Bakal as a "flimsy affair that wallowed along in dull confusion" and clearly represented "a step in the wrong direction for this series," and, more to the point, one in which only "George Scott [i.e. George C. Scott], Angela Thornton and Mary Finney managed to rise above the script.