Far Walker, Short Walk
First after Johnson was another MacCracken “publicist.” In November, 1937, NYU Chancellor Harry Woodburn Chase invited editor John H. Finley of the New York Times to become Director of the Hall of Fame at a salary of $5,000 annually. “It would give us all the greatest happiness . . . and I do not think you would find it an undue burden in your already crowded life. Every effort will be made to take any burden of detail off your shoulders.”
Who can refuse that, especially if he has been assured that the directorship will not impinge on his fist job. Dr. Finley had already done more than enough for several loves. He had been President of Knox College, editor of Harpers Weekly, Professor of Politics at Princeton, President of City College of New York, and Commissioner of Education of New York State.
A student of Latin and Greek, he had been instrumental in raising money to rebuild the Parthenon in Athens, and in starting the Dictionary of American Biography (DAB). He built Lewisohn Stadium in New York City, the setting for many years of popular symphonic concerts.
A great walker, he is said to have once clocked 72 miles in a day, incredible as it seems; and he walked around Manhattan Island annually for 30 years. He was a Presbyterian, of course, with 32 honorary degrees, and never wore an overcoat; and his hard-to-find poems were said by Columbia College Dean Harry Carman to “provide insight into his character.” Carman tells us that, ” . . . if he had a weakness it was his inability to say no to the many demands put upon him.”
Dr. Finley said yes to NYU at the age of 75, and in the next year, 1938, he came down with a severe illness and was given emeritus status by the Times. He would therefore do very little for the Hall of Fame except to add prestige. Although he had been present as an elector at the installation of Grover Cleveland into the Hall of Fame early in 1937, and given the address for Oliver Wendall Holmes, he never presided as Director over a major ceremony. He died in office before the election of 1940.
Perhaps Finley’s biggest contribution other than his name was his influence in introducing the Hall of Fame radio series on National Broadcasting Company (NBC) radio. It was scheduled to follow the program of a young Alastair Cooke on Saturdays at nine p.m., and to be followed by the famous NBC Symphony at ten o’clock, led by the ancient but well nigh imperishable Arturo Toscanini. The series was based on the lives of the residents of the Colonnade, and opened on January 29, 1938 with a big output on Samuel F.B. Morse.
Morse had been a fine painter years before he invented the telegraph and the Morse code. He had exhibited at the Royal Academy in London and been named a professor of art at NYU.
Morse painted many prominent men, including Lafayette, but quit the practice as financially unrewarding. Perhaps his most famous portrait is that of Noah Webster. “It was the original of the frontispiece to the dictionary and was considered by most of the family as the best ever painted of him.”
If only a fraction of the listeners waiting for Toscanini were already tuned in to NBC, it meant a few million listeners for the Hall of Fame, for it is estimated that about seven million persons weekly, for seventeen years, heard the NBC Symphony Dr. Finley had done the Hall of Fame a great public service. His connection with it was not mentioned in the brief biography by Carman.