By then married to his wife Margaret, he tried to eke out a living as chicken farmers in Texas. The young couple soon returned to Wisconsin, where Franz acted in regional theater while teaching art to pay the bills. By 1936, he was a player on the national stage, performing from coast to coast. He became a leading Broadway actor for nearly 30 years, in such plays as "First Stop to Heaven" and "Embezzled Heaven" and "Conversation At Midnight". He made his film debut in a bit part, in 1947, in "Killer at Large", but followed that brief appearance the next year with a memorable role in the motion picture "The Scar" (also titled "Hollow Triumph"). His fourth movie saw him acting with John Wayne in "Wake of the Red Witch", in 1948. He portrayed Chief Broken Hand in "White Feather". He played such intellectuals as Dr. Stern in "The Thing from Another World" (1951), a university professor in "The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake" (1959), and Justice Louis Brandeis in "The Magnificent Yankee" (1950), a role he reprised in the 1965 television adaptation. He appeared in a 1957 television adaptation of A. J. Cronin's novel "Beyond This Place", which was directed by Sidney Lumet.