Songfacts®:

• This song finds Pat Boone heartbroken over an unfaithful girlfriend as he remembers how they used to write each other love letters in the sand. That same year, he landed his first movie role in the comedy Bernardine, which featured the lovelorn tune along with the title hit.
  
  Much to Boone's surprise, the single was a huge hit, peaking at #1 on the pop chart and becoming the #2 song of 1957. It also peaked at #12 on the R&B chart. "'Love Letters In the Sand' was the B-side of 'Bernardine' just because we had to put something on the other side," he explained in a 2016 interview. "We had no idea it would become the biggest-selling record of my career and one of the biggest singles of all time! How little we know!"
• Ted Black and His Orchestra first hit the charts with this in 1931. It was written by J. Fred Coots, who wrote the melody for "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town," and lyricists Nick Kenny and Charles Kenny. The Kenny brothers also penned the Gene Autry hit "There's A Gold Mine In The Sky."
• Boone did his own whistling during the instrumental break.
• Popular crooner Gene Austin and jazz/blues singer Lee Morse also recorded versions in 1931, but most covers came after Boone's success. Andy Williams, Bob Eberly, Bill Haley and His Comets, and Leroy Van Dyke all recorded it through the '60s. English pop singer Vince Hill notched a #23 UK hit with his cover in 1967.
• On a 1957 episode of The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show, actress Laraine Day sang this with the host and the show's Top Twenty singers.
• Sixpence None the Richer included this on their 1996 EP, Tickets For A Prayer Wheel.
• This was used in the pilot episode of the Showtime drama Masters of Sex in 2013.