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life,” he says, “that I became thought of as a dramatic actor rather than a
comedic actor.”
After high school, Franz attended Wright Junior College in Chicago.
“That’s where I did musicals and comedies such as ‘Pajama Game,’ skits
from variety shows, the soliloquy from ‘The Music Man’ and others.”
Next stop: Southern Illinois University; the school had just opened
up the brand-new McCloud Theater (named after a professor), and at that
time (1965), Southern Illinois was rated the second-best party school in
the country; UCLA was number one. Southern Illinois’s party status was
enough to draw Dennis, who he says, was “no scholar.” He enrolled and
got involved in the very first production done at the McCloud Theater –
“A Long Day’s Journey Into Night” – as Edmond – and graduated in 1968
with a Bachelor of Science in Speech and Theater.
He was drafted into the U.S. Army directly out of college and spent
two years, mostly in Viet Nam.
PAID FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME
After being discharged from the army, Franz took a year off to adjust
to civilian life, then found jobs tending bar and as a hotel security guard.
After a year of adjustment, he says he “realized it was time to get up off my
rear end and do something.”
He got together with some college buddies and put on staged
productions in small spaces for no money; eventually, he landed a spot
in “Luv” with a traveling dinner theater group called “The Unexpected
Company.” It was the first time Dennis had ever been paid to act.
Franz found other paying work, including a stint with a Russian
émigré who founded a repertory company at a Country Club in Mount
Prospect. There, Dennis made a connection with Stuart Gordon, artistic
director of one of the more established companies in Chicago: The
Organic Theater Company. Gordon had had a successful couple of plays,
the last one being a science-fiction trilogy called “Warp” that found its
Profiles
This was the first group photo of the reconstituted
Organic Theater Company, taken in an alleyway
on the North Side of Chicago (back row, from left)
Dennis Franz, Meshach Taylor, Joe Mantegna, Joseph
Martinez, Cordis Heard, William J. Norris; (front row,
from left) Carolyn Gordon and Michael Saad