Franz was born October 28, 1944, in Maywood, Illinois, the son of German immigrants[1][2][3] Eleanor (née Mueller), a postal worker from an Ashkenazi Jewish family, and Franz Ferdinand Schlachta, who was a baker and postal worker of German and Polish descent.

He attended Wilbur Wright College and Southern Illinois University Carbondale, graduating from the latter with a bachelor's degree in speech and theater in 1968.

Other major roles were on the television series Hill Street Blues in which he played two characters over the run of the show.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Franz worked regularly with directors Brian De Palma and Robert Altman.

Franz also voiced Captain Klegghorn, the commanding officer and head of the Anaheim Police Department on the Disney cartoon Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series, which ran from September 1996 to January 1997.

The next year he competed on the May 11 celebrity edition of the hit television game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, winning $250,000 for his charity, the National Colorectal Cancer Research Alliance.

He spoke of wartime experiences and postwar trauma of veterans at a Memorial Day concert in 2012 (speaking in the first person, although it was not his own story).