New York hotel manicurist Regi Allen comes from poverty and has resolved to marry a rich man. She doesn’t realise that her best customer, a millionaire in a wheelchair, has developed feelings for her. Instead, she hooks up with Ted, the happy-go-lucky scion of a family that lost all its money in the stock market crash. Although he confesses to her that he needs to marry for money and is engaged to the daughter of a wealthy industrialist, Regi allows the spoiled layabout to take up residence on her living room sofa. While Ted’s fiancée sees in Regi an unwelcome rival, the manicurist’s rich customer considers proposing marriage ... Hands Across the Table was made under Paramount’s newly-installed head of production, Ernst Lubitsch.