Changing The Sitcom Forever

Norman Lear has been one of the most influential television producers of all time. He revolutionized the sitcom, creating shows like All In The Family, The Jeffersons, Maude and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.

Now, beginning Monday evening, Nick at Nite will air a 40-episode marathon of Lear's favorite All In The Family episodes. CBS News This Morning Co-Anchor Mark McEwen spent time with Lear recently in his Los Angeles home, where he shared some fond memories of his greatest achievements.

"I'm really 32. These are all laugh lines," Lear says mockingly of his matured exterior. "These are all from laughing."

The 76-year-old television tycoon, who skimmed the surface of both cultural and racial waters with uniquely progressive programming, has a simple theory about sitcoms.

"If I laugh, you laugh. If I think it's serious, you think it is," says Lear. "When I began to cast All In The Family, my first thought, the only one I had in mindÂ…was Mickey Rooney. And he thought it was ridiculous that I was thinking of doing a show about a bigot. 'You're going to get killed in the streets,' he told me. 'They're going to shoot you dead.'"

Gun-shy network executives stalled for three years before CBS finally got the nerve to put All In The Family on the air. But it became a hit with Carroll O'Connor, cast as the bigot everybody loved to hate: Archie Bunker.

Lear went on to create his own brave, new world with characters like George Jefferson, Fred Sanford and Maude Findlay, each bringing fresh points of view to the TV landscape.

"You can't mirror the problems and anxieties and excitements and victories of a family without some dysfunction. My way of looking at them is they were all a celebration of life," he says.

The many awards in his home serve as silent testimony that Lear chose the right career. There is also a poignant reminder of what might have been.

"My father wanted me to become a football player," Lear says as he points to a childhood photo. "This is me playing sandlot football."

But fortunately, for audiences around the world, Lear realized his true talents.

"I've had the great joy of flying across the country at night and looking down at lights and thinking, 'My God, wherever there is a light blinking, it's just possible I helped to make somebody laugh,'" he says.