I noticed that at the beginning of In a Lonely Place, Dix neglects to answer his telephone, and instead, prefers to let it ring and never call anyone back. After meeting Laurel, he is more willing to answer phone calls and be more social. In a way, this is representative of the fact that Laurel is normalizing him and bringing him back into the social scene. It can be assumed that he keeps up his good behavior of answering his telephone when he's at home because he is the one to inform Laurel of the fact that they've been invited to attend a beach party thrown by his friend Brub and his wife Sylvia. At the end of the film, it is the telephone ringing that saves Laurel from Dix strangling her. The fact that Dix stopped to answer the telephone shows the effect that Laurel had on him, as well as the fact that there must have been some redeeming quality about him even though he almost killed the woman he loved. He was willing to stop for something as insignificant as a phone call, which, in fact brought them great news about the murder, but it was too late. The timing was off, and the really sad thing is that if the phone call had come earlier, Dix and Laurel may have lived happily ever after.
In contrast, Laurel always answers the phone until towards the end when she doesn't want Dix to find out that she plans to leave him and refuses to answer the call in front of him. He gets violent and demands to answer the phone call and starts to realize that she plans on leaving him. He follows her home and there, once his suspicions are confirmed, he proceeds to try to strangle Laurel since he doesn't want anyone else to have her if he can't. As stated earlier, the irony is that the phone call from the police is what saves her life. However, once Dix tells her to answer the phone, she's reluctant to do so, possibly because she is fearful of Dix at that point. It just shows how the movie did a turnaround of who is willing to answer the telephone and who is not, as insignificant as that may be.
I never would have thought a telephone could have so much meaning tied into the film so this really made me think of the possibilities of what it could signify. But now that you do mention it, I realize there are a lot of parts that deal with phones (someone saying Dix never answers his phone, the phone calls, etc). I think you're on the right track with saying it has something to do with Dix becoming more social as a result of Laurel. I think it does reflect the characters' connection with the rest of society or life in general. Remember that quote that they said a couple times from the screenplay? something like: I was born when I met you, lived while I loved you, and died when I lost you.. well since Dix starts answering his phone after he met Laurel, it seems like that's when he really connects with the world around him and starts 'living'. Then, since Laurel is reluctant to answer the phone toward the end, in a sense she's 'dying' when she lost him- and loses her connection with the world. Just a thought.
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