I heard a short programme on Radio 4 earlier, in which Hardeep Singh Kohli was looking at various facts and trivia about mattresses. He asked lexicographer Susie Dent where the phrase "he's thinking of going to the mattresses", uttered in the film The Godfather, came from. Susie said the phrase means 'to go to war with a rival clan'. She explained that mattresses feature a lot in Italian folklore; in the 16th century, during times of war, people were said to hang mattresses down the sides of towers in order to minimise damage from cannon fire.
You can listen to the short programme for another week here. This particular discussion occurred right at the end -- about 13 minutes from the beginning.
I believe that this phrase is a gift to the English language from the FBI informant of the early 1950s, Joe Valachi. Several expressions that feature in Mafia-based films and TV come from old Joe's testimony: consigliere, caporegime, button-man. Joe was also responsible for the term "Cosa Nostra" replacing the word "Mafia". He and his "family" were Neapolitan, For him Mafia denoted Sicilians.
It was often alleged that the author Mario Puzo must have had links to organised crime to have so much inside knowledge. His defence was that he got most of it from "The Valachi Papers".
Posted by: Jemmy Hope | May 02, 2011 at 04:09 PM
To Jemmy's point, I had also heard the term applied to the process of moving the "soldiers" into a safe house or Boss's house in preparation for an inter-family war.
Posted by: John | May 02, 2011 at 11:00 PM
Thanks to you both for your amazing knowledge, which I appreciate greatly.
Posted by: Virtual Linguist | May 03, 2011 at 10:02 AM
A correction to my earlier comment - Joe Valachi's information dates back to the early 1960s, not the 1950s.
Posted by: Jemmy Hope | May 03, 2011 at 08:31 PM