A Broadway star made the cut in People magazine's annual Sexiest Man Alive edition, and although Brad Pitt is once again the cover objet du jour, Craig Bierko — Prof. Harold Hill of The Music Man — was dubbed the sexiest man on Broadway.

The Nov. 13 edition of the magazine (on newsstands now) offers a two-page spread of tall, baritone-voiced Bierko, the thirtysomething suburban New York native who was educated at Chicago's Northwestern University.

"My sister in Kansas cannot wait to get to New York to meet Craig Bierko," said Martha Hawley, who plays Pick-a-Little Lady Maud Dunlop in the hit Music Man revival. She told Playbill On-Line that Robert Preston, who originated the title role in 1957, was elegant and patronly, and she finds Bierko to be a fresh contrast.

"I think [director Susan Stroman] made an interesting choice in going with him because he is, to use the common, 'all that': Big and handsome and sexy and funny and kind and loving," Hawley said.

She added that it's routine to see crowds — including interested young women — waiting to meet Broadway newcomer Bierko at the stage door after the show. "They are all over him!" Hawley said.

The hit revival of The Music Man opened April 27 at the Neil Simon Theatre.

Bierko has been seen in such films as The 13th Floor and The Long Kiss Goodnight, and guested on TV's Mad About You and Ally McBeal before landing the role of the con-man who sells an Iowa town on the idea of creating a boys' band to ward off "trouble."