King of the Hill (1993)

Based on the Depression-era bildungsroman memoir of writer A. E. Hotchner, the film follows the story of a boy struggling to survive on his own in a hotel in St. Louis after his mother is committed to a sanatorium with tuberculosis. His father, a German immigrant and traveling salesman working for the Hamilton Watch Company, is off on long trips from which the boy cannot be certain he will return.

• against the odds
• based on memoir or autobiography
• bellboy
• canary
• elevator operator
• epileptic seizure
• great depression
• hotel
• living alone
• lock child
• marbles
• st. louis
• tuberculosis
• understanding